ESPN fired college sportscaster Ron Franklin today, terminating his 24-year-long relationship with the network.
The story is generally reported as colleague Jeannine Edwards offering a comment on an off-air conversation he was having, him saying something like “leave this to the boys, sweet baby,” her responding something like “I don’t appreciate you calling me that,” and him calling her “asshole.” Then a third party reported it to brass, he apologized yesterday, and got canned today.
Once upon a time Franklin regularly did the Saturday night college football game on ESPN. He might ultimately have been demoted from there because of this 2005 Holly Rowe incident, in which he called her “sweetheart.” That one was on the air.
Uh, dude? What the hell?
I’m the first to decry excessive sensitivity and the whole culture of victimhood that lionizes the act of standing around waiting around to be offended, but to quote the great Artie, “this ain’t that.” Colleagues are colleagues, and this seems an awfully basic lesson in professionalism to be beyond Franklin’s comprehension (particularly on take two!). Apparently he was comfortable remaining a sexist jackass, but you’d think the guy could at least learn restraint.
He’s very good, and I’ll miss his work. But he deserves to be fired. At most of 69 years old, he may be too old to redeem himself, too.
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I like Ron Franklin’s work a lot. Mostly nostalgia from the Sat night games and the Thursday night games (when those were a rarity not the norm).
If true, the demotion for the Rowe incident was unnecessarily harsh. Firing for the Edwards incident is probable given the high wire act of on air media personalities. Someone pointed out that there is probably much more to the story and I have heard he had become crotchety and mean. Ron can probably blame Harold Reynolds and Steve Phillips for some of ESPN’s final verdict.
Then again, as Mrs. BD pointed out, “What’s Marv Albert doing now? Oh yeah, he was fired too…for about a month.”
Yeah, but the Marv Albert thing was about biting, sodomy, and face-sitting. The Ron Franklin thing is sick.
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