NBC Suspends Jeremy Roenick For Comments On Spittin Chicklets
NYPOST – Former NHL forward Jeremy Roenick was suspended indefinitely by NBC Sports on Monday for his inappropriate comments about coworkers. Roenick made a series of questionable remarks about fellow hockey broadcasters Kathryn Tappen, Patrick Sharp and Anson Carter during a recent appearance on the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast. An NBC Sports spokesman said the suspension is without pay and the network would have no further comment at this time.
On the podcast, Roenick discussed a vacation to Portugal with his wife and Tappen where he made repeated references to the NBC Sports anchor’s appearance and joked about the possibility of the three of them having sex together.
Roenick said they went on vacation together because his wife, Tracy, and Tappen are good friends. When another resort guest asked about the situation, he recalled, “I play it off like we’re going to bed together every night, the three of us.”
“If it really came to fruition, that would really be good, but it’s never going to happen,” Roenick said.
Roenick subsequently praised Tappen as “one of the most professional sports personalities I know.”
Ok by now I’m sure everybody has heard that Jeremy Roenick was suspended for joking around about having potential threesomes with Kathryn Tappen and Patrick Sharp on Spittin Chicklets. Now let’s state the obvious. Cleary Roenick was just shooting the breeze with the boys and being totally unfiltered which is part of what makes Spittin Chicklets such a great podcast. Also is sounds like Roenick is very close with Kathryn Tappen and Patrick Sharp and my guess is that neither of them took offense to it. He also went on to praise how professional and great at her job Tappen is.
However having said all that anybody who didn’t somewhat understand the reason for the suspension is living in outer space. I mean this is obviously a sensitive subject in this day and age especially at NBC where they have a history of turning a blind eye towards sexual abuse at the workplace. Hello Matt Lauer. A place where they killed a story on Harvey Weinstein. So I won’t argue that NBC are clearly hypocrites for doing nothing when actual crimes were taking place and now dropping the hammer on Roenick for making jokes, but that doesn’t mean the suspension isn’t warranted. You can’t publicly be going around saying you want to have a threesome with your attractive female colleague. Like even if Tappen was totally fine with it privately it still puts her in a precarious spot and puts NBC in a precarious spot. I mean what’s she gonna say? Yeah I have no problem with my coworkers joking about my sex life on the biggest hockey podcast in the world? It’s just a no win situation for her. Therefore I think my biggest complaint with the way NBC handled this is there was no reason for this ever to be public. Just deal with it behind closed doors, give him a 1 game suspension and move on.
PS – The reason I waited to blog this was because I was trying to get info on how Kathryn Tappen actually feels about the entire thing. I think that’s pretty important here. Like if she came out and said she was offended by it I didn’t want a blog up saying it was no big deal. And even if she’s not offended which I doubt she really is I’m still not sure she can publicly defend Roenick because it would make her look bad in the #Metoo era. Then Jordie blogged it before I heard anything and I thought he had a simpleton take so I deleted it and wrote this.