The University of Virginia in Charlottesville has a home football opener against William & Mary on Sept. 2. ESPN’s airing the game, and had assigned a broadcaster named Robert Lee to play-by-play duties.

That’s since changed, the network announced:

ESPN's statement on Robert Lee no longer calling the game between #UVa and W&M pic.twitter.com/jxg2Oeed8g — Eric Hobeck (@eric_hobeck) August 23, 2017

On Aug. 14, a group of white supremacists held a rally in Charlottesville, ostensibly in defense of a statue honoring Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general. An Ohio man named James Fields drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman named Heather Heyer and wounding more than a dozen others.

Leaving Lee on the broadcast would’ve been simple. But at some point, somebody would’ve noticed the fact that a person named Robert Lee was calling a game in Charlottesville, and that would’ve become a joke for hours.

Just received this email from an ESPN executive re the Robert Lee controversy. pic.twitter.com/OuBORlWO9f — Yashar Ali (@yashar) August 23, 2017

ESPN not wanting to be associated with memes that relate back to either the Civil War or a recent act of violence? Reasonable, especially if the solution is to “switch” Lee to a different game. And it’s not like this is a big game.

The response to ESPN’s decision, however, has been ... memes and jokes. Not really a lot that could’ve been done by ESPN to avoid that either way.

Company says that Lee (a young broadcaster who works for ESPN3) was more comfortable not doing this assignment. — Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) August 23, 2017

ESPN source on the Clay Travis/UVA game brouhaha: There was a sensitivity about Robert Lee, a young, new announcer doing the game... — Dan Wolken (@DanWolken) August 23, 2017

...that his intro to CFB broadcasts would be Robert E. Lee memes. ESPN had conversation with him, they mutually decided to switch assignment — Dan Wolken (@DanWolken) August 23, 2017

Lee’s LinkedIn profile lists Syracuse as his alma mater and New York as his location, noting he speaks Mandarin Chinese. For ESPN, he’s primarily covered mid-major college basketball games and previously covered various sports for Time Warner Cable in Albany.

And now, an ESPN employee whose name sounds nearly the same as Lee’s:

Rather worried my employee ID/pass may not admit me in the AM. Life, as scripted by @OnionSports. — Bob Ley (@BobLeyESPN) August 23, 2017

Virginia head coach Bronco Mendenhall spoke after practice recently about the state of his team during the turmoil.