ESPN’s recent effort to take full advantage of the fantasy football phenomenon included a staged player auction segment that looked a little too much like a slave auction. ESPN has now apologized for the segment.
“Auction drafts are a common part of fantasy football, and ESPN’s segments replicated an auction draft with a diverse slate of top professional football players,” ESPN said in a statement issued to TheBigLead.com. “Without that context, we understand the optics could be portrayed as offensive, and we apologize.”
This will surely cause some to claim that “MSESPN” is simply letting its supposed liberal bias show, and that it’s bowing to a vocal minority who objected to the similarities between bidding on football players and bidding on slaves. But if ESPN was as liberal as many accuse it of being, ESPN wouldn’t have produced that segment in the first place, right?
The optics were awkward at best, ESPN should have known it before airing it, but ESPN did the right thing by acknowledging it and apologizing for it. Especially in light of the domestic mess that has unfolded in only four days.