NFL reportedly pressured ESPN to abandon concussion documentary

ESPN offered two statements on the Frontline/League of Denial controversy between Thursday and Friday. Now, president of the network John Skipper has offered his own personal statement.

League of Denial was slated to be a collaboration between Frontline and Outside the Lines. It was announced Thursday that ESPN would have no further involvement with the project, which premieres Oct. 8. The movie has a tie-in to a book by the aforementioned Fainaru-Wada and Fainaru, both investigative reporters for ESPN.

PBS announced Thursday that ESPN was pulling out of a joint project between the two networks investigating concussions and the impact of head injuries in the NFL. ESPN insisted that the decision was not the result of pressure by the NFL. In contrast, a Friday report in the New York Times says that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell directly pressured ESPN to pull out of the project at a recent lunch meeting in Manhattan.

Goodell and NFL Network president Steve Bornstein met with ESPN president John Skipper and the network’s executive vice president of production, John Wildhack last week. The Times report describes that meeting as “combative.” Goodell and Bornstein laid out their displeasure with the documentary, “League of Denial,” because it cast the NFL in a negative light, and as purposely ignoring the long-term impact of head trauma among players.