ESPN Undefeated - why not one white person

[Larry_Williams]

Whitlock and, even more so, Travis are generally cynical trolls that play to their readers' base instincts. They are clickbait artists. Essentially more intelligent versions of Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith but for print - which actually now that write that might make them worse than both Bayless and Smith.

I judge opinions and takes based on ... the actual opinions and takes.

Let's take the Missouri fiasco last year. Let's go back and read what Travis and Whitlock were writing, while the rest of the media were buying the outright lies being spun about wild KKK gunmen on the loose, the president's motorcade ruthlessly running over a protester, and on and on.

I have no idea of Whitlock's and Travis' motives. But I know in general that their stuff is grounded far more in reality than a lot of the other stuff I see out there, including the aforementioned column wailing about Lochte and white privilege.

 

[spskillz]

I judge opinions and takes based on ... the actual opinions and takes.

Let's take the Missouri fiasco last year. Let's go back and read what Travis and Whitlock were writing, while the rest of the media were buying the outright lies being spun about wild KKK gunmen on the loose, the president's motorcade ruthlessly running over a protester, and on and on.

I have no idea of Whitlock's and Travis' motives. But I know in general that their stuff is grounded far more in reality than a lot of the other stuff I see out there, including the aforementioned column wailing about Lochte and white privilege.

I disagree and @slingle has this covered. They are trolls.

 

[palmetto1986]

the thread should have been locked right after this gif. perfect @PawPower1981

 

[slingle]

I judge opinions and takes based on ... the actual opinions and takes.

Let's take the Missouri fiasco last year. Let's go back and read what Travis and Whitlock were writing, while the rest of the media were buying the outright lies being spun about wild KKK gunmen on the loose, the president's motorcade ruthlessly running over a protester, and on and on.

I have no idea of Whitlock's and Travis' motives. But I know in general that their stuff is grounded far more in reality than a lot of the other stuff I see out there, including the aforementioned column wailing about Lochte and white privilege.

I specifically underlined generally earlier because Travis and Whitlock did have some very legit points on Mizzou. And I'm sure they've hit on a few others things here or there as well.

But if you read enough of either of their work, there's a general siding or theme to always take the contrarian side to what the mainstream media narrative is. And, yes, that's not necessarily a bad thing. That is until you do so even in light of evidence that points to the mainstream narrative being the correct one.

 

[Larry_Williams]

I disagree and @slingle has this covered. They are trolls.

Were they trolling when they were dead-on during the Missouri disaster?

A university president lost his job in part because the rest of the media gulped down sensational lies hook, line and sinker.

 

[Larry_Williams]

I specifically underlined generally earlier because Travis and Whitlock did have some very legit points on Mizzou. And I'm sure they've hit on a few others things here or there as well.

But if you read enough of either of their work, there's a general siding or theme to always take the contrarian side to what the mainstream media narrative is. And, yes, that's not necessarily a bad thing. That is until you do so even in light of evidence that points to the mainstream narrative being the correct one.

Hey, that's fair.

I guess the counter would be the mainstream sports media taking predictable and disingenuous paths as well, such as in the aforementioned column.

 

[spskillz]

Were they trolling when they were dead-on during the Missouri disaster?

A university president lost his job in part because the rest of the media gulped down sensational lies hook, line and sinker.

I was going to reply but again @slingle has this covered.

 

[Larry_Williams]

I was going to reply but again @slingle has this covered.

How about the topic at hand? You think Travis is trolling with the aforementioned column also?

 

[petegroove]

What do you expect? It's (((ESPN))) goy. They'll (((diversify))) all the Nordic ski teams before it's over.

Just gonna assume these are sarcastic triple parentheses, mocking the OP.

 

[OrangeRegalia]

The funny thing about Whitlock being brought into this discussion and people siding with him over The Undefeated is he was fired as the EIC of The Undefeated because he was grossly incompetent.

ESPN including himself had been touting The Undefeated as a "Black Grantland" and he was the Bill Simmons of it. That onviously didn't work out because he could never get the website up and running and he was fired from the job and ultimately ESPN.

He had to resort to a tumblr account to write what he thought people wanted to hear and eventually got hired by Fox. And coincidentally when that happened his views tended to, I guess change, to what you would assume is what his employer wanted.

Shedding The Undefeated for Fox Sports is well about as a complete 180 as you can get in the sports world. And maybe he needs a paycheck, but it also probably says a good bit about him and his views on different topics. Or well his views that might not be his views.

 

[spskillz]

How about the topic at hand? You think Travis is trolling with the aforementioned column also?

Yes. The Undefeated article is horrible, but Travis takes his time to troll rather than simply refuting the author's point.

Ex: he immediately identifies the premise as ESPN's point of view rather than that of a single writer...this is done solely to create controversy.

 

[Larry_Williams]

The funny thing about Whitlock being brought into this discussion and people siding with him over The Undefeated is he was fired as the EIC of The Undefeated because he was grossly incompetent.

ESPN including himself had been touting The Undefeated as a "Black Grantland" and he was the Bill Simmons of it. That onviously didn't work out because he could never get the website up and running and he was fired from the job and ultimately ESPN.

He had to resort to a tumblr account to write what he thought people wanted to hear and eventually got hired by Fox. And coincidentally when that happened his views tended to, I guess change, to what you would assume is what his employer wanted.

Shedding The Undefeated for Fox Sports is well about as a complete 180 as you can get in the sports world. And maybe he needs a paycheck, but it also probably says a good bit about him and his views on different topics. Or well his views that might not be his views.

As I recall, he was fired from ESPN in part because he was an egotistical tyrant who didn't know how to lead. That's the way the story goes, anyway.

The suggestion that his views and opinions did a 180 as a result of this career change could not be further from the truth.

 

[Larry_Williams]

Yes. The Undefeated article is horrible, but Travis takes his time to troll rather than simply refuting the author's point.

Ex: he immediately identifies the premise as ESPN's point of view rather than that of a single writer...this is done solely to create controversy.

Travis systematically, point by point, blew the premise out of the water.

Regardless of what you or I or anyone else think his motives are, the piece on its face successfully addressed the fundamental problems of the column in question.

 

[jmh9713]

Were they trolling when they were dead-on during the Missouri disaster?

A university president lost his job in part because the rest of the media gulped down sensational lies hook, line and sinker.

Check out this take on the column by Clay Travis.

Travis and Jason Whitlock generally make far more sense on social issues than anyone at ESPN.

What the ...... i hate what espn is becoming

 

[jmh9713]

People actually watch ESPN for things other than Clemson sports?

Love 30:30 and ESPN60 man tears dude....man tears

 

[spskillz]

Travis systematically, point by point, blew the premise out of the water.

Regardless of what you or I or anyone else think his motives are, the piece on its face successfully addressed the fundamental problems of the column in question.

He also, at this point, has now successfully trolled me as now I have clicked on the article and am in a discussion over it. Damn you Larry! Haha!

 

[Larry_Williams]

He also, at this point, has now successfully trolled me as now I have clicked on the article and am in a discussion over it. Damn you Larry! Haha!

Ha!

 

[slingle]

As I recall, he was fired from ESPN in part because he was an egotistical tyrant who didn't know how to lead. That's the way the story goes, anyway.

The suggestion that his views and opinions did a 180 as a result of this career change could not be further from the truth.

Whitlock was a troll well before anything at ESPN went down.

 

[Larry_Williams]

Whitlock was a troll well before anything at ESPN went down.

Troll or not, he still speaks more truth than most folks out there.

 

[Trading Tiger]

You must also be the type of guy that sees the headline of the article, gets immediately outraged and tweets at the author without ever reading said article.

The reason you keep watching or keep reading is so you don't let your preconceived notions rule your worldview. You jumped headlong into a conclusion and accusations with hardly any invesigation.

Congrats. You've reached peak internet.

So basically what you're saying is, people shouldn't watch 15 seconds of grainy, cell phone video taken from 30 yards away, see a white cop shoot a black man, assume that the black man did nothing wrong and that the white cop must be racist, and then form an entire "movement" based on those ridiculous assumptions. Bravo, I agree 100%.

"Some people" are just dumb as shit though.

 

[slingle]

Troll or not, he still speaks more truth than most folks out there.

I have really hard time taking anyone's "hot taeks" that are regularly featured by breitbart dot com.

 

[Larry_Williams]

I have really hard time taking anyone's "hot taeks" that are regularly featured by breitbart dot com.

Do you also have a hard time taking seriously stories from so-called "social justice" writers who make fools of themselves trying to expose things like ... Peyton Manning mooning someone 20 years ago?

I don't read Breitbart, but I'm guessing they'd also endorse this excellent piece by The Atlantic on the dangers of extreme political correctness on college campuses.

Does such an endorsement mean the piece itself is just ultra-conservative propaganda? I would hope we could all think more deeply than that.

 

[slingle]

Do you also have a hard time taking seriously stories from so-called "social justice" writers who make fools of themselves trying to expose things like ... Peyton Manning mooning someone 20 years ago?

I don't read Breitbart, but I'm guessing they'd also endorse this excellent piece by The Atlantic on the dangers of extreme political correctness on college campuses.

Does such an endorsement mean the piece itself is just ultra-conservative propaganda? I would hope we could all think more deeply than that.

No. It doesn't in and of itself. I mean, I think Clay (I guess to his credit?) has only been featured a couple times on Breitbart and one was because he said of Lena Dunham quote: "I hate this bitch" which obviously makes the men's rights activists over there joyful.

But if you have your stuff regularly showing up on Breitbart, like a half-dozen times this year in the case of Whitlock, then maybe there's a theme there. Again, it doesn't mean that you can't occassionally make a valid point. But I'd say it might be a pretty decent indicator that there's more often than not a particular angle to your words being taken.

 

[clemsonpaw00]

Do you also have a hard time taking seriously stories from so-called "social justice" writers who make fools of themselves trying to expose things like ... Peyton Manning mooning someone 20 years ago?

I don't read Breitbart, but I'm guessing they'd also endorse this excellent piece by The Atlantic on the dangers of extreme political correctness on college campuses.

Does such an endorsement mean the piece itself is just ultra-conservative propaganda? I would hope we could all think more deeply than that.

Uh Re: the Peyton Manning case - His side of the story was that it was a "mooning"; from the woman's perspective, she said that he literally pressed his ass and other undesirables in her face, which was substantiated by a track athlete who witnessed the incident. And beyond that, the much bigger issue with the case was how the Mannings, in their inability to accept any negative press, continued to bring up the incident years later and led to the woman involved being fired from her job. Taking the position that this was social justice warrioring run amok seems disingenuous at best. Yes, I strongly dislike Shaun King, but the story was picked up and investigated by other outlets for a reason. There was a story to be told.

 

[Larry_Williams]

Uh Re: the Peyton Manning case - His side of the story was that it was a "mooning"; from the woman's perspective, she said that he literally pressed his ass and other undesirables in her face, which was substantiated by a track athlete who witnessed the incident. And beyond that, the much bigger issue with the case was how the Mannings, in their inability to accept any negative press, continued to bring up the incident years later and led to the woman involved being fired from her job. Taking the position that this was social justice warrioring run amok seems disingenuous at best. Yes, I strongly dislike Shaun King, but the story was picked up and investigated by other outlets for a reason. There was a story to be told.

Yes, the story was investigated by other outlets and exposed as wildly irresponsible.

 

[clemsonpaw00]

Yes, the story was investigated by other outlets and exposed as wildly irresponsible.

So then why did you try to pass it off as merely a "mooning" when that was far from the official account?

 

[pharout73]

When everyone wants to make things about race,I say, make it about people. Met both gems and jerks of all races, backgrounds, circumstances. All that matters is how they treat myself and others.

Back to my safe place for now.....

 

[clemsonpaw00]

No. It doesn't in and of itself. I mean, I think Clay (I guess to his credit?) has only been featured a couple times on Breitbart and one was because he said of Lena Dunham quote: "I hate this bitch" which obviously makes the men's rights activists over there joyful.

But if you have your stuff regularly showing up on Breitbart, like a half-dozen times this year in the case of Whitlock, then maybe there's a theme there. Again, it doesn't mean that you can't occassionally make a valid point. But I'd say it might be a pretty decent indicator that there's more often than not a particular angle to your words being taken.

Yeah, at some point Whitlock realized that his easiest path to prominence was simply to take the uncle tom position on all issues. Nothing gets white people more excited than having a black guy they can point to and say "see! he agrees with us! surely we must be right!"

 

[Larry_Williams]

So then why did you try to pass it off as merely a "mooning" when that was far from the official account?

The official affidavit she signed said he pulled his pants down while she was examining his feet. There was no mention of any physical contact.

There were also material changes in her story, coupled with revelations from other cases that make her appear sue-happy.

 

[Larry_Williams]

Yeah, at some point Whitlock realized that his easiest path to prominence was simply to take the uncle tom position on all issues. Nothing gets white people more excited than having a black guy they can point to and say "see! he agrees with us! surely we must be right!"

That's just nowhere close to true.

 

[OrangeRegalia]

As I recall, he was fired from ESPN in part because he was an egotistical tyrant who didn't know how to lead. That's the way the story goes, anyway.

The suggestion that his views and opinions did a 180 as a result of this career change could not be further from the truth.

Correct. Egotistical tyrant and doesn't know how to lead. Makes you grossly incompetent, IMO, to be EIC of a website backed by ESPN. Also, he's been criticized by people that worked for him and others who have investigated his time at ESPN and The Undefeated that he just really had no idea what he was doing. Maybe that goes back to the egotistical tyrant part and not understand what his job entailed and what others did.

His views have changed. So maybe a complete 180 is an exaggeration, but he has not always been what he is now at Fox Sports.

For example:

Whitlock was racially profiled in Rock Hill, where he lived while working for the Charlotte Observer. Pulled over by cops and they wouldn't let him go. He wrote an article on this in between his first and second stint at ESPN and I'll try to find it at some point. He also liked to bring it up on podcasts in the past. I believe he did on Bill Simmons at one point, but I can't be too sure, I listen to too many.

He uses this story to basically say that, black people will start focusing on black on black crime, mass incarceration, and so on when a way is finally figured out to not be racially profiled. And not have negative assumptions put on by their skin color. Bringing this up because what's the main comeback of police shootings? "Well maybe you should worry about y'all killing each other".

Fast forward to his time now at Fox Sports. Where he likes to use his dead relative due to police brutality and his time being racially profiled as a caveat to knowing how you can be affected by it. Basically saying I've been a part of it so my opinion matters a lot
More than others and then proceeds to contradict himself in the past saying that black people need to focus more on their communities and killing each other.

The complete opposite thing he was caping for before.

Now the first part, among other things, helped him get back on ESPN. Along with becoming the EIC of The Undefeated. What you said got him fired. But The Undefeated's message and position on things didn't change when he left. It has always been the same. A man that now says what he says at Fox has very little in common with the website that put on the forum last night by The Undefeated. Two contradictory things.

So maybe his opinion hasn't changed. Maybe he hasn't made a 180. But maybe that's because he doesn't have opinions or views of his own but just panders to his audience and bosses. Because flip flopping on something that he deemed traumatizing for himself and the effects other people have had from it, is pretty lowest common denominator.

 

[OrangeRegalia]

No. It doesn't in and of itself. I mean, I think Clay (I guess to his credit?) has only been featured a couple times on Breitbart and one was because he said of Lena Dunham quote: "I hate this bitch" which obviously makes the men's rights activists over there joyful.

But if you have your stuff regularly showing up on Breitbart, like a half-dozen times this year in the case of Whitlock, then maybe there's a theme there. Again, it doesn't mean that you can't occassionally make a valid point. But I'd say it might be a pretty decent indicator that there's more often than not a particular angle to your words being taken.

Don't get me wrong I'm all for Lena Dunham hate. Anyone who thinks it's comical that they sexually molested their sister when they were younger is a POS.

But you can learn a lot about Travis from the fact that a large amount of other sports columnists, black and white, continue to call him out on his BS over and over again. Even people that work for Fox have zero issues with saying he's a joke. And hell Katie Nolan, a Fox employee and super underrated, devoted a segment on her show about an article that Travis allowed to run on his site and deemed fair and bashed him and the article. When multiple people in his own profession call him a racist, a sexist, and a click bait artist, I tend to stay away from those people.

 

[clemsonpaw00]

That's just nowhere close to true.

Any response I have would be redundant with what @OrangeRegalia posted so I'll wait on your retort to his thoughts.

 

[Larry_Williams]

Don't get me wrong I'm all for Lena Dunham hate. Anyone who thinks it's comical that they sexually molested their sister when they were younger is a POS.

But you can learn a lot about Travis from the fact that a large amount of other sports columnists, black and white, continue to call him out on his BS over and over again. Even people that work for Fox have zero issues with saying he's a joke. And hell Katie Nolan, a Fox employee and super underrated, devoted a segment on her show about an article that Travis allowed to run on his site and deemed fair and bashed him and the article. When multiple people in his own profession call him a racist, a sexist, and a click bait artist, I tend to stay away from those people.

I don't read Clay Travis a lot. Maybe he's a total scumbag; I have no idea.

I do know that over the last year, in the 5-6 things I've read from him, he has made a lot more sense on some of the major social issues than the typical voices.

We've gone this far in the thread without actually discussing the column that I introduced to begin with. I thought it was pretty close to dead-on, with the exception of him saying there's never any public hate for black athletes (Jameis Winston, anyone?)

Can you cite specific instances of prominent and established media figures calling him a racist, sexist clickbait artist?

 

[iceheart08]

Just gonna assume these are sarcastic triple parentheses, mocking the OP.

nope. its the alt-right's (read: white supremacists in suits) way of identifying Jewish people or supporters, so that they can mock/attack them. par for the course for @Bosse de Nage

 

[iceheart08]

Travis systematically, point by point, blew the premise out of the water.

Regardless of what you or I or anyone else think his motives are, the piece on its face successfully addressed the fundamental problems of the column in question.

i disagree 100% with the underlying premise of the article, that ryan lochte reasonably believed that ryan lochte wasn't lying.

 

[Larry_Williams]

i disagree 100% with the underlying premise of the article, that ryan lochte reasonably believed that ryan lochte wasn't lying.

I'm not sure how you came to the idea of that as the premise of the article.

 

[iceheart08]

I'm not sure how you came to the idea of that as the premise of the article.

its his starting point. maybe premise was the wrong word. but he is operating under the assumption that ryan lochte wasnt lying.

we probably arent going to see eye-to-eye on this one either, but its not surprising at all that these guys are featured on breitbart occasionally. anyone who uses the term "black privilege" is going to find a home there.