Welp, Dan Le Batard is back virtue signaling and cashing in left-wing political points. This is nothing out of the ordinary for the former ESPN personality as he provided his analysis of the ESPN layoffs, which included polarizing personality and one of the network’s most prominent race-baiters, Ryan Clark. Le Batard also fired a shot at OutKick in his racially unhinged rant on Friday’s show.
If you’re unaware, OutKick broke the news that the “Worldwide Leader in Sports” was going to let go of Ryan Clark on Monday, though our reporter Bobby Burack was made aware of the move on Friday. When Burack and fellow reporter Dan Zaksheske reached out to ESPN in the afternoon to tell them they were going to break the story within the hour, ESPN panicked. What they did next is under scrutiny. They used that hour to pull Ryan Clark off air during a commercial break, and pitched the story to The Athletic, so they could break it before we did. Since then, Jemele Hill has tried to slander OutKick and Burack. Le Batard is now jumping on that slanderous bandwagon while providing a race-focused take that may have inadvertently been the most Ryan Clark thing he could have said.
Dan Le Batard arrives at Shaq’s Fun House at Mana Wynwood Convention Center on January 31, 2020 in Miami, Florida. (Jason Koerner/Getty Images)
“Disney and ESPN somehow keep getting called too woke,” Le Batard said. “All the journalists are out the door now. All of the Black people, or almost all of the Black people who were actually going to say things that Black people agree with strongly, all of them are gone too. You’re gonna have trouble finding Hispanics, you’re gonna have a network run by McAfee and all of the White people now in charge there.”
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There it is! The race card has been pulled. Classic Le Batard. Remember the unwritten rule for liberal sports personalities, just like Ryan Clark: If you don’t have a proper argument or anything truly intelligent to say, make it about race.
Le Batard then turned his attention to OutKick.
“It’s fairly shocking to see Ryan Clark let go in that fashion,” Le Batard stated. “To embarrass a proud Black man at the end because an institution covered in s–t stains does the reporting. Someone leaks the information to an institution covered in s–t stains that is a perpetual grift,” Le Batard claimed, without proof, as he slandered our reporting.
ESPN is parting ways with longtime NFL analyst Ryan Clark following an 11-year run at the network. (Michael Allio/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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He went on to say: “Someone inside ESPN decided I’m going to f–k Ryan Clark at the end.
“They had it planned for Tuesday. Let me embarrass this dude because that’s the game I play at a dishonest time with something that isn’t even media. [OutKick’s] just a dishonest entity in a costume of media.”
When asked to provide proof of our “dishonesty,” Le Batard did not respond to a text message. Nor has he responded to inquiries about the lack of Black people in charge of his show.
In sports media, mistakes are made. Corrections have been made in reporting over the years at OutKick, just like any other legitimate media outlet, but to claim the entire company is “dishonest” and essentially fake media, is wildly unfounded.
Instead of objectively criticizing ESPN for how it handled Ryan Clark’s exit, including waiting days to address it, Le Batard took shots at us. Where’s the journalistic integrity in that? There is none.
Dan Le Batard (right) on the ESPN2 show “¿Highly Questionable?” with co-hosts Bomani Jones (right) and Le Batard’s father, Gonzalo. ( )
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This is also another example of a leftist calling someone and something they don’t like a “grift.” It’s a low IQ way to distract & deflect from the actual issue at hand. A grift is sharing content and building a platform based off of things you don’t actually believe. That couldn’t be further from the truth at OutKick.
OutKick drives the national conversation about sports and American culture with original, smart, fearless reporting along with common sense analysis. We question the consensus, which Le Batard falls into more often than not, and expose the destructive nature of “woke” activism people like him propagate. OutKick is the antidote to the mainstream sports media that often serves an elite, left-leaning minority instead of the American sports fan.