It would have been a fun conspiracy theory, but alas there is a reasonable explanation.
Draymond Green was a guest Monday on the Manningcast, ESPN2’s “Monday Night Football” simulcast featuring Peyton and Eli Manning, and his microphone cut out as he was promoting his new podcast on Colin Cowherd’s network, The Volume.
The Twitter account for The Volume quipped, “[D]on’t worry, the podcast audio will be better” with a laughing emoji.
While it would have been fun to imagine a commander at the ESPN Mothership saying “Abort! Abort!” while Green was mentioning working with Cowherd, you can see in the video that the microphone on Green’s headphones gets tangled up inside his hoodie. Furthermore, he was teed up for the spot by Peyton Manning — who went on Cowherd’s podcast before the season to promote the Manningcast — and so it didn’t catch the producers off-guard that this would be a topic of conversation.
It would have been more fun to imagine that something nefarious was at play here.
An ESPN spokesperson, when asked about the conspiracy theory, said, “Ridiculous to entertain.”
Cowherd was a longtime ESPN TV and radio talent before departing for FS1 and iHeartRadio in 2015. Last week, in a podcast with Ethan Strauss, Cowherd was talking about the differences between ESPN and Fox Sports, complimenting the latter for his belief that they “don’t run the company through Twitter”.
“ESPN is run by Disney and you could always feel the safety net of Disney hovering over ESPN. You could always feel Disney’s presence,” Cowherd said. “Whether it was with budgets, topics, they avoided anything controversial. You were often encouraged to avoid a topic because they had their tentacles on everything. They had so many leagues, so many commissioners… but Fox is owned by a very entrepreneurial Australian family, the Murdochs. They have been in the crosshairs of criticism from day one on this soil. Fox News, Wall Street Journal, New York Post. They are entrepreneurial, they are naturally, innately, risk-takers.
“They don’t run their company through Twitter. They have been dogged on Twitter since day one. When I was at ESPN, that company was, there were times I thought it was run by social media. It was very reactionary to various media critics. I don’t even know if our bosses know half the media critics. Getting back to your question, I think there was just a different sensibility at ESPN. I was considered more of a loose cannon there, but at Fox I’m just viewed as an employee. I work at a company with Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Clay Travis, Will Cain, multitudes of outspoken people.”
Green’s podcast will be released every Wednesday on the Volume podcast network throughout the NBA season.