We Need to Talk About Schefter
The paradox of football culture's reliance on an emotionless thumb.
I’ll be honest with you, I did not want this to be the way I bring back the newsletter.
I’ve been a bit busy with work, making some changes in my personal life, etc. — all of the things that can stall the growth of a newsletter that is supposed to be a longer-form sports shitpost. I was also struggling to find something that felt compelling enough to write about. It was hard to find the right cross-section of sports and culture to bite down on and discuss in the way that I do.
If there’s one thing that spurs me to write, though, more than humor does, it’s anger. So today, when Adam Schefter decided to demean the life of a football player less than 24 hours after his death, I needed, uh, a little space to talk about it.
NFL quarterback Dwayne Haskins was 24 years old, about to turn 25 in less than a month. He passed away tragically in South Florida last night after being struck by a car. ESPN’s NFL insider, Adam Schefter, broke this news via Twitter in the only way he knows how — like a complete dick (bolded is my emphasis):
Dwayne Haskins, a standout at Ohio State before struggling to catch on with Washington and Pittsburgh in the NFL, died this morning when he got hit by a car in South Florida, per his agent Cedric Saunders. Haskins would have turned 25 years old on May 3.
The tweet has been deleted, and Schefter tweeted the same statement but replaced the offending language, now referring to Haskins as “a standout at Ohio State before becoming Washington’s first-round pick and playing in Pittsburgh.” While many are dunking on him online or calling for an apology, at the time of this (angry) writing, he has not issued one, opting instead to retweet team statements and pressing forward as the intrepid asshole he is.
Apology or not, though, the damage is done. Instead of simply stating the stops in Haskins’ career, Schefter and his terminal football brain could not divorce the young man’s professional struggles with his life being cut tragically short hours ago.
Imagine, for a second, you go to a funeral, and someone starts the eulogy by saying “So-and-so was my friend, but also a huge twat sometimes.” Instead of a private situation like a funeral, though, where you’d be uncomfortable but move on with your day, Adam Schefter tweeted this to his 9.4 MILLION FOLLOWERS, drastically changing the discourse around the young quarterback’s life. The fact that I feel compelled to write this in defense of Haskins in itself is an indication that Schefter’s asinine, insensitive tweet has massively affected our conversations around Dwayne Haskins.
Dwayne Haskins was 24. Twenty-four. He had his entire life ahead of him, and as someone who saw his talent firsthand, I’m confident that he would have found a place in football, whether it was under center or elsewhere. We didn’t have to talk about that, at least not right now, but Schefter forced our hand. A young man’s tragic passing is now overshadowed by his relative worth to Adam Schefter.
This isn’t even the first time in recent memory that Schefter has revealed his distressing lack of emotional intelligence. Less than a month ago, when word came that (alleged, I have to say alleged) serial sex pest Deshaun Watson would not face criminal charges from a grand jury after being accused of a variety of crimes ranging from harassment to assault, Schefter opined:
A grand jury declining to charge Watson on criminal complaints is not necessarily the truth; to use a football term Schefter can understand, it’s basically a punt. Trials of this nature, no matter how many accusations, are extremely difficult to prosecute.
What is or isn’t “the truth” is something we can discuss at a later date. My larger concern is the clear disregard Schefter has for the 10 criminal complainants and 22 complainants overall who alleged that Watson engaged in criminal sexual behavior. By framing these women as liars, Schefter threw victims of sexual assault under the bus in favor of the unprecedented levels of access he has to Watson’s people, or he’s ponying up for the access he wants.
It’s the same, or similar, disregard he has for Haskins’ family, teammates, coaches, and anyone that is mourning that loss. You mean nothing to Adam Schefter if you do not give him what he needs to do his job. If you do not provide him football value, you provide him no value at all.
What do you do when one of the NFL’s most prominent news-breakers and insiders is also a spineless, emotionless tool?
Schefter sits atop a throne at ESPN, free of any real accountability or blowback aside from a few mean tweets thrown at him, because he provides fans and other news outlets with breaking news that other media outlets aren’t getting as quickly. Because he technically works outside of the NFL’s media empire, one may also see him as more reliable than an insider like Ian Rapoport, who’s on the NFL’s payroll. While it’s hard to hold a guy like Schefter to the same standards as other journalists, because being an insider and a reporter are two different beasts, it’s still worth examining how ingrained he is into our culture as sports fans.
When Schefter tweeted that horrifying passage about Watson, I, being me, said something along the lines of telling him to fuck himself in a quote tweet. Twitter auto-blocked me from seeing his tweets, on grounds that my offensive language resembled harmful abuse toward an individual. Cool, not as offensive as calling 22 survivors of sexual misconduct and assault liars, but okay.
For the next, say, three weeks, in the peak of free agency and within a generally insane NFL news cycle, I would see friends and media members quote tweeting “Schefter bombs” that I simply could not see or engage with. I caught up on news from a bot that regurgitates everything Schefter tweets (aptly named @ScheftySaid, an account I strongly recommend if you recently got auto-blocked), but it still felt like things were distilled down from their original source. As much as I felt that I took the righteous side on Schefter, I was still experiencing unbelievable FOMO.
This anecdote is to say we, as football fans, are perversely attached to Adam Schefter and his news breaks. It doesn’t matter if we like him or not — he’s feeding us piggies our football slop. A non-sports fan’s answer to this conundrum would be to simply avoid engaging with him, but the scoop he gets is synonymous with modern football consumption. While enjoying NFL football in itself is problematic (a topic for another day), to fully divorce oneself from Adam Schefter is to cut off your own arm, as it pertains to football. Yeah, I can’t fucking stand the guy, but he’s still giving me my news. This robotic, emotionally immature man dictates and dominates football talk with impunity. As time progresses and his poor phrasing seems like less and less of an accident, it seems like he — and ESPN — knows he can go about his business unchecked.
My little shitpost newsletter, which pivoted toward the serious for a change, does not have an answer to the Schefter conundrum. I simply wanted to point out one of football’s most complained-about, least deeply-analyzed problems. It would be childish to ask for a boycott of ESPN, or to unfollow Schefter, or take some grand action against him. However, if we, as fans, are inextricably linked to this man, what I can ask of all of you is to engage with sports with the humanity and compassion that Schefter refuses to.
Dwayne Haskins was 24. Whatever was in his past, football-wise or personally, he had his entire life ahead of him. Remember him this way, instead of the way Schefter wants you to.