Sean Salisbury believes ESPN has drifted from what many viewers want after a long day: sports highlights, a little entertainment and a break from the rest of the news. Too often, he said, sports programming became another forum for political arguments.
“If I want that, I’ll get it on a different channel,” the former NFL quarterback and ESPN analyst said in an October interview.
Salisbury spent 12 years at ESPN before leaving in 2008. The interviewer joined the network in 2012 and stayed until 2021. Both remember the early 2000s as a time when ESPN’s studio shows put sports first and relied on entertaining personalities to keep people watching.
Salisbury said he would sometimes watch the same edition of SportsCenter more than once, not because he needed the highlights again, but because he liked the people presenting them. His father worked a blue-collar job, and Salisbury said that helped shape how he thought about the audience: someone coming home from a day on a construction site might simply want to enjoy a game or catch up on the scores.
He thinks that kind of viewer can get lost when political and social debates take up too much airtime. During his years at ESPN, he said, discussions focused on football rather than the quarterback’s race. He also sees social media as part of the problem: instead of covering the sports story, commentators can end up trying to become the story themselves, often by saying something provocative enough to circulate online.
Sports and politics do intersect, Salisbury acknowledged, and there are times when those issues deserve attention. But, he said, they should be the exception rather than a daily fixture. When every segment is built around a dispute, viewers who came to hear about their teams may instead find themselves watching analysts argue over something said on another program.
The conversation also touched on comments Emmanuel Acho made about NFL Live. In July, Acho praised Ryan Clark for helping turn the show into a “juggernaut,” while suggesting that few people watched it before Clark joined. The interviewer pointed out that the show averaged roughly 650,000 viewers a day in 2011 and 2012, before Clark arrived; the version with Clark never reached that average.
Former host Trey Wingo responded on social media with a pointed remark about apologies matching the disrespect. Salisbury also weighed in, tagging Wingo and several other former NFL Live contributors. He told the interviewer that Acho was arriving late to a conversation about the show’s history.
Salisbury compared overlooking the original crew to discussing Led Zeppelin while ignoring Jimmy Page. Later contributors may do excellent work, he said, but that doesn’t erase what came before. He also recalled learning from broadcasters such as Dan Patrick, Chris Berman and Mike Tirico, whose personalities helped make studio programming enjoyable.
The interviewer remembered getting a job at ESPN in 2012 and hearing family members react with excitement. By the time the interviewer left in 2021, those reactions had cooled. The interviewer said they didn’t miss working at ESPN, though they did miss producing live radio: preparing a four-hour Saturday show, then adjusting on the fly when breaking news arrived.
Salisbury understood the appeal. Live television, he said, came close to the pressure and immediacy of playing quarterback. He recalled sitting beside Tirico on Monday Night Countdown when a camera failed just before the show began. Salisbury was worried about how they would manage; Tirico stayed composed, and viewers at home never knew there had been a problem.
He also praised the producers and other staff members who made those broadcasts possible. His 12 years at ESPN shaped his career and brought him lasting friendships. “Those 12 years changed my life,” he said.
Salisbury still sees shows on ESPN that capture what he values. He singled out College GameDay, calling it the best studio show in the world. He wants analysts to speak honestly, rather than tailoring their opinions to please someone else, because that kind of performance can wear away at credibility.
The ESPN Salisbury remembers gave audiences a reason to stick around after the highlights. He believes the network still has the people to do that, but says it needs to remember why viewers turned on a sports channel in the first place: to hear more about sports than about whom they should have voted for.
