Shame on ESPN

“Cupcakes and cream puffs.” The last time ESPN assigned Quint Kessenich to a Husky game, he placed three cupcakes on the sidelines at Husky Stadium during the third quarter. Both he and the game’s play-by-play announcer Mark Jones, were forbidden from working Washington games after the incident. The cupcakes (even though I was promised cream puffs, which I’m craving now…) were supposed to be a representation of Washington’s non-conference schedule in 2017, Rutgers, Montana (sigh), and Fresno State. The Huskies, who were ranked #6 in the country at the time, were making a push to return to the College Football Playoff, and were ultimately rewarded with a berth in the Fiesta Bowl, where they lost to Saquon Barkley and Penn State.

That stunt alone is embarrassing enough from the so-called “Worldwide Leader In Sports,” who already has quite an issue when it comes to covering the Pac-12 as a whole. Then, just to put the cherry on top, Jones proceeded to talk up Alabama’s “much tougher” non-conference schedule after Kessenich was finished bashing Washington’s, that had been set three or four years earlier. One of the opponents on the Crimson Tide’s schedule? Fresno State, who were suddenly put in a much different light in the eyes of the broadcast.

Jones didn’t have to show that much bias on air, but then to put the icing on the cupcake, tweeted this after the Huskies suffered a crushing opening week loss in the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game to Auburn in 2018:

On Saturday, Jones and Kessenich will return to Husky Stadium for the first time since the cupcake incident. Not only should these two not ever be allowed to work a Washington game again, but ESPN showed how they truly feel about the Pac-12 conference as a whole. What should be (before you know… the first two months of the season happened) billed as the conference’s most exciting and heated rivalry, and hyped up like the Red River Shootout is every year, is being treated as nothing more than an afterthought in the eyes of the college football’s largest media outlet.

Oregon, who came in at #4 in the first College Football Playoff rankings, should be irate. For them, this game is an opportunity to assert themselves to the national media. Thrashing a Washington team that came into the year billed as one of the nation’s (sigh) up and comers, should give them an extra notch in their belt as they push for one of the four spots. ESPN is actively doing this to push the Pac-12 as a whole off to the side, even though it’ll always have a special spot for USC and Oregon, and it almost seems like they’re attempting to keep the conference as far away from the College Football Playoff (not as far as Cincinnati though) as possible.

George Kliavkoff has a huge Larry Scott mess to clean up when it comes to the Pac-12’s national representation and viewership, but if the conference’s reputation is truly going to change, ESPN has to do its part too. Make more efforts to work primetime Pac-12 games into your schedule. Advertise the conference, and hype up Arizona State-UCLA the same way that you hype up an Oklahoma State-Texas Tech game. Put one of your top broadcast crews on the game, not literally the worst possible option.

ESPN putting this pair on this game is an embarrassment, and this should be the only thing Huskies and Ducks can agree about this week. The Pac-12 deserves better than this.