The new ESPN.com ombudsman is worthless

I don't know who reads this site, or who cares even about sports journalism related stories, but I guess it comes under the banner of "Sports" and it involves ESPN, so I get to talk about it.

Colin Cowherd, an ESPN Radio personality, decided on his airwaves to ask his readers to shutdown www.thebiglead.com just because he could. Here's a link or two to information about Colin vs. thebiglead.com. Sure, thebiglead.com has said unfavorable things about ESPN, but that's what these sports blogs are for, to make fun of shit, and ESPN is so big that there's plenty of stuff/people to make fun of. It's why we make fun of fat people, there's just to much to ignore. ALL sports blogs make fun of ESPN sometimes unless they blog is owned by ESPN, in which case they've sold their souls anyway so who wants to read them.

I was a little upset that one of the websites I check daily was shutdown for 48 hours, but not as upset as I was reading ESPN's first response on espn.com. Their new ombudsman, a woman who's 62 years old and lives in bumblefuck New York (right in touch with the sports journalism world, and her age puts her at the perfect age to.... die, soon hopefully) gave this as a response.

Lets say I own a radio station, and one of my personalities does something to shutdown a business for 48 hours, which is precisely what Schrutebag did (Schrutebag is the nickname the sports blogs of Deadspin, KissingSusyKolber, and Withleather came up with in TheBigLead's absense), then I'd punish said personality in some way. Not ESPN, they just let all their journalists know that this will not be tolerated. I'm sure they said it in a very menacing tone, or an e-mail with caps to let them know they're serious. DO NOT DO THIS THIS IS NOT OK THIS IS IN CAPS SO YOU KNOW WE MEAN IT!!!!!

Basically, they're saying that Schrutebag gets a free pass because there was never an express written rule on the book not to crash a website, even though it is against the law to do so. ESPN Radio should have suspended him immediately, anything other than simply issuing a warning to all personalities that THIS WILL NOT BE TOLERATED!!!!!

The worst part is the ombudsman's response. She was specifically picked as the ombudsman to call out ESPN when shit like this happens and they don't respond appropriately, instead she basically says that all is OK because they issued the strong warning. If you look, they actually used italics to show how serious they were. Her job is a week old, she had her first chance to call out ESPN from the inside, and she screwed it up worse than a Romo hold. She said since there wasn't a rule on the book, and now that there is, ESPN did a fine job in quickly getting that rule on the book. Ummmmmm, shutting down a business is OK? You didn't know it wasn't OK? Well, now that we have the rule, you know. That sounds like logic meant for a 4 year old, they do something wrong, you teach them it was wrong, then punish them if they do it again. She really fagged out of this one.

Call out The Worldwide Leader, say he should be suspended, make people interested in what you have to say for the next 2 years. That would have been speaking for the common man, thinking like someone who does not work for ESPN. Instead she stayed completely in the middle, saying it was wrong, but the response was OK and never mentions any repercussions that could have/should have happened. What the fuck good are you if you don't even call out your company's employees when they are blatantly wrong?

Here's to another 2 years of ESPN going farther down the toilet without anybody from the inside helping to fix it, even the woman hired to do just that.

(The fag out link is not gay porn for those of you not following the story, it's Billy Packer being hilarious)

m8r