Over the last couple weeks, there have been a handful of ESPN employees who have spoken candidly about the recent round of layoffs that took place at The Worldwide Leader in Sports. Scott Van Pelt, Stephen A. Smith, and Ryen Russillo have all shared their thoughts on the layoffs on the air. On Monday morning, radio host Jon "Stugotz" Weiner of The Dan LeBatard Show With Stugotz joined them in addressing the layoffs, but he did so in a much different way than any of them did.
While Van Pelt, Smith, and Russillo offered up thoughtful takes on the situation in an effort to shed some light on how the layoffs impacted them and others at ESPN, Stugotz used his platform to send shots at a couple former ESPN employees who have taken aim at ESPN in light of the layoffs.
Fox Sports 1 analysts Colin Cowherd and Jason Whitlock have both been critical of ESPN since the layoffs happened. Cowherd provided a grim prediction for the company by saying that he believes there are going to be similar rounds of layoffs that take place once a year for the next decade. Meanwhile, Whitlock wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal over the weekend and wrote about how he thinks Deadspin’s criticisms of ESPN over the years led to ESPN becoming more liberal, which in turn hurt the brand and its business.
Stugotz let it be known that he does not agree with Cowherd or Whitlock on The Dan LeBatard Show and went off on them for sharing their opinions on their former employer in the first place. He told both of them to stop talking about ESPN and went as far as to suggest that Whitlock once told him he doesn't like Cowherd behind his back. You can watch Stugotz go off in the clip above.
You can also check out a transcript of what Stugotz said, courtesy of The Big Lead, below:
Those on social media enjoyed hearing what Stugotz had to say:
But shortly after Stugotz went on his rant, Whitlock took to Twitter to respond to what he said. He flatly denied ever telling Stugotz that he doesn't like Cowherd:
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It’ll be interesting to see how all of the parties involved here proceed with this. You would think that ESPN and Fox Sports 1 would both be hesitant to allow this to go too far, but clearly, some bad blood exists between these three that isn’t just going to go away.
