ESPN might not be so clean itself when it comes to its treatment of women.
After only one episode, ESPN canceled its show with Barstool Sports. Many believe the severance has to do with some “sexist” comments made in 2014 by Barstool employees towards ESPN reporter Sam Ponder.
But, according to Jenn Sterger, ESPN’s appearance of being a Champion of Women is completely bogus.
You’ve probably heard of Sterger. She’s the woman that was the recipient of some very personal photos from Brett Favre in 2010. The sports reporter and television personality has twice interviewed for a job with ESPN, and allegedly both times showed that “The Worldwide Leader in Sports” has no right to be the self-proclaimed moral authority of women’s rights.
Since we are being honest, I will say this: I HATE how Barstool Sports treats women. But the other side is JUST as bad. pic.twitter.com/i8kSoyA98A
— Jenn Sterger (@jennifersterger) October 24, 2017
Her first interview with ESPN came in 2007 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Sterger, then 23 years old, had applied for an on-air position. After the interview, the ESPN employee asked her to go to a club with him. That “club” turned out to be a strip club.
Sterger says she was then scolded by ESPN bosses for going to the strip club, even though she wasn’t even an employee. She eventually did not get the job.
Her second run-in with ESPN leadership came the following year in 2008. Sterger had been invited to ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut by the same person who took her to the strip club the previous year.
“They sent a car service to Jersey to pick me up. When I asked for more details about the job, everyone I spoke to were super vague and nondescript about what they were looking for. They had me come in, and paraded me around the place. Then took me into the office for some weird line of questioning. Asking me if I had hooked up with ‘so and so’ etc. or ‘this person’ or ‘that person’, this was my job interview,” Sterger said.
Following that “interview,” ESPN allegedly cancelled her scheduled ride back to the airport, and was told to hitch a ride with the same employee who had been interviewing her. The conversations in that car ride became very Harvey Weinstein-ish when the ESPN employee told Sterger about the “numerous girls” he had been with, and that he could “help her career.”
“We made it to the city where he asked me to go to dinner with him, I declined and got on the closest train. I cried the whole way home. He still works there. He’s still gainfully employed. He’s a decision maker there,” Sterger said. “I later found out through a friend that works there they only brought me in to show his coworkers I was ‘just as f**kable in person as I was in pictures.’
Looks like ESPN might not be so wholesome after all.