Former ESPN Producer Nicole Noren's Exit Fuels Gambling Debate

You guys know that I am a little bit, not a little bit, I'm hypersensitive to negative stories about sports gambling. An article came out today in the Columbia Journalism Review. I was unfamiliar with this publication, but Nicole Norin is a decorated ESPN, now former decorated ESPN producer, who has written or has sat down for an interview, I should say, with a writer with the headline coming out as, I'm not going to have blood on my hands. A question was posed to Nicole about why she resigned from ESPN. She was a highly decorated producer for ESPN. She had been involved with Emmys and Peabody Awards. She worked for Outside the Lines. She did some in-depth reporting on gender-based violence and mental health of college students, and concussions. She did NFL stories. She was part of a ton of major work at ESPN. And when she found out that ESPN was going to get in bed with sports gambling, was going to get in bed with sports betting companies, she decided to resign. Now, this is getting picked up by a lot of national media types that are saying this is the exact reason why sports gambling is so dangerous and why we need more people like Nicole to share their experiences about the problems. She was asked, when you shared your concerns with your bosses at ESPN and other leaders, did they offer a defense? Her answer was no. It was almost like putting their heads in the sand. What bothered me the most was a seeming disregard for the dangers and not thinking about the ramifications of ESPN normalizing gambling for an audience that looks to ESPN as sort of their sports guide. She said, a few weeks after my last day, a former coworker sent me a link to ESPN's website. They had posted an interactive gambling story, a primer on how to gamble on sports. The animation are bouncy and bright. It's pretty much made for kids. She was asked about her own personal experiences with gambling. And the question was, what ultimately persuaded you to leave ESPN? And she told the story, my grandfather, my father, and one of my brothers were pretty much destroyed by sports gambling addiction. I grew up in Ventura, California, and multiple times we had suddenly had to move because of extreme financial ups and downs. I mean, I grew up in a sports book. We didn't go to museums and typical places kids go to. We were dragged to Las Vegas in the 80s and hanging out in the Hilton, that's the Westgate, and Caesars sports books when kids weren't supposed to be around there. I remember going to the horse track, going to the dog track. My brother died 13 years ago on the sidewalk in downtown Las Vegas. It's a stark reality, but it illustrates the tragic arc of being brought there as kids so our dad could gamble at sportsbooks, to then surviving on the streets there as a homeless person and dying at 36. The level of that statement and the amazing jump that that now is being allowed to be unchecked. Grab my attention quickly. I'm not trying to say that you as a human being do not have a right to walk away from any job that is not align with your morals or your goals as a professional. If you are working for a company that you do not agree with their goals, you have every right to sit there and say, I'm out. I'm Now, I bring this story up because the frustration that comes from this is where are the stories about alcohol the same way? Because without alcohol advertising, there is no sports media. And I'm talking about the broad stroke of it. I'm talking about all of it. I'm talking about going back to the merger. I'm talking about the early ABC, CBS, NBC days, right? Before we had Fox. Yes, I'm old, kids. I'm 49 years old. I'm talking about the rabbit ear days. When the NFL was just in a fledgling state, when the NBA was still flailing around until Bird and Magic showed up, alcohol advertisements saved sports. Without advertising alcohol, there is no sports media. So how many people have died in America due to alcohol since the 1960s? How many drunk driving deaths have there been in America since the 1960s? I was born in 1977. There wasn't a seatbelt law across the entire country in the 70s. We had to put that in place. We had to get states to do that. We had to mandatory. My father's generation grew up jumping back and forth from the front seat to the back seat, whether dad had a six pack open in the front seat. I'm not saying that's good. What I'm saying is there is such selective amounts of criticism coming down on sports gambling or those trying to make money on the sports gambling industry and these stories get propped up and pushed out by national media types who hate sports gambling that say look see look what this woman had her father and her brother her brother could have been addicted to a multitude of things and him becoming homeless and ultimately dying on the streets of downtown Las Vegas I need to know so much more about that story before I go okay it's sports gambling's fault