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).
Buffalo's NFL team is playing its first home game since 1996, and in order to make it work amid a pandemic, the Bills are partnering with BioReference Laboratories in a pilot testing program.
U.S. Soccer and the women’s national team have settled the players’ legal claim over inequitable working conditions, putting to rest a part of the team’s gender discrimination lawsuit.
Jim Weber, CEO of Brooks Running a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, talks to Cheddar about the big growth in sales as more people took up running amid the pandemic.
Here are the headlines you Need2Know for Tuesday, November 25, 2020:
Kim Ng, who started her Major League Baseball career as an intern, has become the majors' highest-ranking woman and Asian American in baseball operations.
Justin Turner was removed from Los Angeles’ 3-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 6 of the World Series after registering Major League Baseball’s first positive coronavirus test in 59 days.
Bill Reiter, NBA insider for CBS Sports, joined Cheddar to talk about the trend of big-time athletes like LeBron James entering the big-time business world.
FanDuel CMO, Mike Raffensperger, joined Cheddar to discuss fantasy sports amid the coronavirus pandemic. Raffensperger also discuss how the company is handling bets, particularly in the NFL as players contract the virus.
The Tennessee Titans find themselves back in a waiting mode hoping the NFL allows them back inside their headquarters by Tuesday with their game against the Pittsburgh Steelers postponed until later this season by the league’s first COVID-19 outbreak.
The Tennessee Titans have suspended in-person activities through Friday after the NFL says three Titans players and five other personnel tested positive for the coronavirus.
