ESPN has removed Jason Whitlock from the website it created especially for him, according to ESPN PR man Richard Sandomir. A weasely press release quickly followed:

As we continue to move forward in the process of creating The Undefeated – a new ESPN site focusing on race and sports – we have collectively decided to make some structural adjustments that will maximize the skill sets and strengths of our team, leading to the best possible output for the site and for all of ESPN. To that end, Jason Whitlock will now be entirely focused on what he does best: creating distinctive and compelling content, which will live across various ESPN platforms. Jason’s thought-provoking perspective has always been a hallmark of his work and this will allow him to completely devote his time and energy to that. As a result, he will make significant contributions to multiple ESPN entities and programs.


This is a fancy way of saying Jason Whitlock is a terrible manager and an incompetent editor, and was deemed by Bristol to be incapable of successfully launching The Undefeated, but he’s still under contract so they’ll keep him around to do some other stuff where he can’t ruin other people’s careers.

ESPN claims that The Undefeated will live on, with Leon Carter taking over the interim EIC duties. The most recent scheduled launch date for the site had been June 24, though there had been many announced in the 17 months since Whitlock started up the project.


What went wrong? Well, Jason Whitlock, basically: