When former ESPN President John Skipper resigned in December, shock waves rippled through the sports network.
But this week, The Hollywood Reporter’s James Andrew Miller [revealed](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/john-skipper-details-espn-exit-cocaine-extortion-plot-1094657) that behind that departure was a cocaine extortion plot, just adding to the disbelief.
No one Miller spoke to “saw any kind of indication that he had been using,” the reporter told Cheddar Friday. “There was just widespread shock.”
Even Skipper himself did not know he would resign when he did. That day “he woke up as president of ESPN, fully believing he was going to continue to be president of ESPN,” Miller explained.
But Skipper told him that he was “threatened concerning a purchase of cocaine” by an unidentified person.
After revealing this to Bob Iger, CEO at Disney, which owns ESPN, Skipper resigned, leaving behind a company he had worked at for almost three decades.
During his time as president, Skipper led the company’s aggressive push to secure long-term agreements with sports leagues to cover live events.
But the network has been losing subscribers for years, and its outlook even under Skipper was already murky.
Miller said ESPN is now “straddling two eras.”
“It’s got one foot in this unbelievably successful past, and it’s got another foot in a very, very uncertain future because of cord-cutting and rising programming costs.
“There’s a lot more uncertainties about what ESPN will be like five or ten years from now than there probably ever has been in its history.”
For the full interview, click [here](https://cheddar.com/videos/inside-john-skippers-abrupt-departure-from-espn).
From the environment to income inequality, many issues can be seen through the lens of our favorite athletes and teams. In this episode, we’re exploring the world of sports.
Ariel Epstein, Sports Betting host & analyst at Yahoo! Sports, joins Cheddar Bets to share her favorite prop bets and her best picks in the NFC Wild Card Round.
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Joe Osborne, Sports Betting Analyst for Odds Shark, dishes out his insight for how to approach a week where some teams choose to sit out their star players.
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Retired gymnast Nia Dennis went viral last year after a video of her gymnastics floor routine highlighting Black excellence gained traction on social media. Now the athlete and UCLA graduate is partnering with juice and plant-based foods company Pressed to promote health and wellness in the new year. "They have helped me start this year off strong and start living a healthier lifestyle," she said.
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Iain MacMillan, Senior Editor BetSided, joins Cheddar Bets to break down betting underdogs in NCAA Basketball Conference play and the favorites for the Wooden Award.
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COVID-19 continues to impact the world of sports, and most significantly, the NHL. The world's premier hockey league has postponed a total of 104 games so far this season, and a spike in omicron infections has led to a surge in postponements in recent weeks. This comes after the NHL went dark for six days in December because of a COVID-19 outbreak, and after the league decided not to have its players participate in the 2022 Beijing Olympics so it can use the time to reschedule postponed games. Yahoo Sports NHL reporter Justin Cuthbert joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
