Just one week after catching a ton of backlash for airing a fake fantasy football auction featuring black athletes, ESPN finds itself at the center of yet another controversy. And as many people have already noted, this one feels like something that was ripped straight off the satirical news site The Onion.
It seems that when ESPN first put together their broadcasting assignments for the start of the 2017-18 college football season, they assigned a young Asian-American broadcaster named Robert Lee to cover the University of Virginia’s home game against William & Mary in Charlottesville, Va. on Sept. 2.
However, as first reported by Outkick the Coverage, The Worldwide Leader in Sports later made the decision, in conjunction with Lee, to switch his assignment to a different game.
Reason being, the network and the broadcaster believed Lee’s name—which was obviously the name of a Confederate general—could potentially stir up strong feelings in people if he called a game in Charlottesville, a city that was besieged by white nationalists during a rally earlier this month.
