Former Bucs great and current (?) NFL Network analyst Warren Sapp is in hot water after getting arrested this weekend in Miami for allegedly slapping around his girlfriend of two years.
The result was that Sapp, who was in Miami as part of the NFL Network’s team covering the Super Bowl, was pulled from the network’s programming for the weekend. It may not be temporary.
The news provoked SI.com’s Peter King to suggest Sapp’s hiring was a mistake in the first place. In his must-read Monday Morning Quarterback column, King believes the NFL Network would have been better off hiring another former Bucs great, John Lynch, rather than Sapp.
I bet NFL Network folks wish they’d hired squeaky-clean John Lynch last year. Not a good weekend for Michael Irvin or Warren Sapp — and not a good weekend for the NFL shield when two of their own network analysts, on consecutive days, are in the news on rape and domestic-abuse allegations.
Joe knows that the major cable outlet in the Tampa Bay area, Out House Networks, pisses in the collective faces of sports fans daily by depriving football fans in a football crazed area like the Tampa Bay region the outstanding NFL Network. It instead forces schlock and insepid feces upon subscribers like every friggin’ shopping channel known to the free world along with Bay Sludge 9 (“First, weather on the nines — it’s the same as it was 10 minutes ago! — and when we return, a live report on the new swing set in the Brandon city park!”) so nutless football fans (read: women) in the area without the NFL Network may not know just how good Sapp really is on the air.
Sapp brings a unique and, in fact, intelligent voice to the NFL Network, something different than the standard ex-quarterback speak. Part of the reason the NFL Network is a daily must-watch for Joe and all real football fans (read: men) is thoughtful, colorful insight from people such as Sapp.
Granted, Sapp is not the most pleasant of people and even Joe had a little run-in with Sapp in the past — though it was more Sapp testing Joe and playing a joke on Joe. To be fair to Sapp, this weekend’s incident is something out of the blue. Unlike Irvin, Sapp had no track record on a police blotter, sans a couple of minor incidents with pot.
What the future holds for Sapp on the NFL Network is dicey. The NFL is all about image. The NFL Network took a chance on Irvin, hardly a man with a clean background. Irvin’s recent news item is a civil suit, not a criminal suit. Thus, he remained on the air this weekend.
How long the NFL Network sticks with Sapp will be interesting provided the charges stick. Having a guy on the air who, indirectly, represents the league, who has a rap for throwing around a woman in a hotel room, isn’t exactly something the NFL covets.