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ESPN's Jimmy Pitaro: Scrapping of Kaepernick documentary wasn't related to NFL deal

The timing of the announcement of the ESPN-NFL merger and the scrapping of ESPN’s Colin Kaepernick’s documentary has triggered rampant speculation that the two are connected.

ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro, appearing Thursday on CNBC, insisted that’s not the case.

Asked specifically whether the move relates to a desire to not anger the Trump administration, which must approve the ESPN-NFL deal, Pitaro said this: “No, absolutely not. We made that decision many months prior to the NFL announcements. I think what happened is Spike [Lee] was, I believe, on the red carpet and was asked this question somewhat out of the blue, and that’s why it became news. But, there were creative differences. We made the decision in partnership with Colin and Spike to not move forward many months before any NFL announcement, and it had nothing to do with the recent deals.”

That won’t stop people from believing there’s a link. In the same CNBC interview, Disney chairman Bob Iger mentioned that he first spoke about ESPN taking on partners two years ago. The rumors of an imminent ESPN-NFL deal trace to May 2024.

The agreement didn’t just happen. It was many months in the making. ESPN had reason to know that, by the time the Kaepernick show debuted, ESPN would be in partnership with the NFL.

In hindsight, it would have made far more sense for ESPN to declare that the Kaepernick show had been scrapped long before pen was put to paper in the ESPN-NFL deal. If, for example, the news of no Kaepernick documentary had landed a year ago, no one would be thinking it had any link to the looming NFL agreement. (Even if it did.)

Perception is reality. The reality is that many perceive the NFL wanted the Kaepernick documentary to die, or that ESPN decided to kill it without the league asking. The reality is that there’s no way to prove the absence of a connection.

Questions like that will arise whenever ESPN exercises discretion in a way that helps the league. Some such exercises of discretion will be obvious. Some will be a little harder to spot.