ESPN has made significant progress in toning down its political and social rhetoric in recent years. This was a point for which Colin Cowherd credited ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro last week during a discussion with OutKick.
However, one can’t help but wonder how dedicated ESPN is to serving fans and focusing on sports following a recent announcement. Last week, the company announced it had re-signed David Dennis Jr.
The network says Dennis will now cover the “NBA, music, and black culture” across Andscape and ESPN television shows.
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The obvious first question is why, in 2026, ESPN would pay someone to cover music and black culture on television. However, more pressing is the message that ESPN just sent to its employees.
The network is reportedly considering mass layoffs this year following its acquisition of NFL Network. Undoubtedly, those cuts would affect talented and hardworking people both on air and behind the scenes. Yet while employees face losing their jobs, ESPN has chosen to reinvest in Dennis, a character who has spent much of the past few years embarrassing the network.
If the name sounds familiar, you might remember that during the Sydney Sweeney-American Eagle “scandal,” Dennis declared that the ad left him, wait for it, “mortified.”
“I didn’t think anything of the Sydney Sweeney ads. But then ACTUAL SCHOLARS ON MESSAGING, EUGENICS AND FASCISM explained what was going on then yes I understood and became pretty mortified because hey sometimes IT’S GOOD TO LISTEN TO EXPERTS,” he posted on Bluesky.
Just the type of person American sports fans want to hear from: someone who finds pretty blonde women mortifying.
Sydney Sweeney poses for a portrait backstage during the 2026 Stagecoach Festival at Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif., on April 25, 2026. (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)
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It’s not just that Dennis is a trying-too-hard dork. He’s also, like most race idolaters, remarkably hypocritical.
Hours after Hulk Hogan’s death last July, Dennis published an article urging readers to remember Hogan as a racist. Dennis argued that nothing Hogan accomplished as a cultural icon mattered because he used the N-word once during a secretly recorded phone call nearly two decades ago.
“When you are a racist that is your legacy above all else,” Dennis wrote. “Hulk Hogan died being known a racist who also became famous as a professional wrestler.”
The argument was particularly notable because Dennis previously encouraged readers to separate the art from the artist when discussing several rappers convicted of violent crimes.
Moreover, he applied no such moral standard during his obituary of Kobe Bryant.
In 2020, a day after Bryant’s death, Dennis penned an article titled “Remembering Kobe Bryant, a Man Who Never Trusted in Tomorrow.” In the piece, Dennis eulogized Bryant for his accomplishments on the court, in the community and as a father.
“He showed us a fatherly love that was beautiful to watch unfold. It’s fitting that of all the memes and internet that Kobe birthed, from counting to five, to him glancing over at the crowd, to two men willing to meet in Temecula to fight over him, the last and most viral of them is Kobe explaining basketball to Gigi,” Dennis wrote.
“They’re courtside at a game and he’s breaking down some basketball mechanics. She’s nodding, absorbing the information, and then she finishes his sentence. Kobe takes a half-beat, smiles, and nods. She gets it. Pride bursts from his eyes.”
Yet by the end of the article, you’ll notice an omission: any mention of the rape allegations against Bryant.
The ESPN logo is displayed at the top of a building in L.A. Live in Los Angeles, California. (Aaron M. Sprecher/Getty Images)
In 2003, a 19-year-old woman accused Bryant of raping her at Cordillera Lodge and Spa in Edwards, Colorado. While the case was dropped after the accuser declined to testify, the evidence against Bryant was substantial.
“Prosecutors seemed to have a strong case,” a New York Times article from 2020 stated. “According to court documents, an examination of the woman at a hospital revealed a bruise on her neck and tears in her vaginal wall. Both her underwear and Bryant’s shirt were bloody. Bryant told the police he had not explicitly asked for consent.”
Nonetheless, ESPN’s latest investment apparently found less harm in what Bryant may have done to that woman than in what Hogan said during a private phone call decades earlier.
He appears to be one of those people who treat word crimes more seriously than violent crimes.
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Elsewhere, Dennis urged Lane Kiffin to try to stop Louisiana from “eradicating” Black voting power, as if that claim is self-evidently true and Kiffin would have any ability to influence it. He also challenged WNBA viewers who watch only for Caitlin Clark to stop watching the league altogether.
Most recently, he labeled LeBron James a “gentrifier” for saying he’d rather play in Nashville than Memphis. Apparently, according to Dennis, a Black person must always defend Memphis because it is home to the National Civil Rights Museum.
Even if you’ve never heard of Dennis before, you can understand from these examples exactly what he’s doing. He’s trying to play the same role that Jemele Hill and Bomani Jones played before him. He wants to be ESPN’s version of Joy Reid.
But ESPN should know better. Hill and Jones failed. Shows built around them, including “SC6” and “High Noon”, were among the network’s biggest disappointments.
At least Hill and Jones were recognizable figures. Dennis isn’t. He pops up from time to time, embarrasses ESPN and then returns to spreading racial idolatry on Bluesky.
A detailed view of the ESPN logo on a microphone before the game between the Detroit Pistons and Cleveland Cavaliers at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Mich., on Feb. 27, 2026. (Nic Antaya/Getty Images)
ESPN hired David Dennis Jr. in 2021 as a sign of participation in the supposed racial reckoning. At the time, the idea of signing the son of a civil rights activist likely appealed to executives. It was a poor decision then.
But ESPN was a different company at the time.
To make this move now, just as the network has begun regaining the trust of average sports fans, is inexcusable. It shows ESPN is still prioritizing identity politics and public relations over the interests of its consumers.
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And that falls on the shoulders of Jimmy Pitaro. If he truly wanted to move ESPN beyond the woke, BLM-era mindset, he would not have approved the re-signing of this clown.
At least ESPN has already laid off many of its pretty blonde women. Had it not, it might have risked Dennis having to share a set with one of those “mortifying” women.