Squid City or: Why it’s so easy to make fun of Darren Rovell

Last week, everyone’s favorite hashtag, #cancelRovell, popped back up on Twitter. For those who aren’t familiar with Darren Rovell, he is an ESPN sports business reporter as well as a business correspondent for ABC News. He is famous for his overaggressive focus on New Media buzzwords. The first thing Rovell does when he gets up in the morning is whisper the word “synergy.” Every other tweet of his contains some form of the word “brand.” Unfortunately, as an ESPN employee, Rovell gets pretty good access to information and athletes. He has a large Twitter following and, arguably, one of the better jobs in the world. What does Darren Rovell do with such an opportunity? Well, he tattletales.

On Thursday Notre Dame first-year wide receiver Justin Brent was spotted out on the town with adult actress Lisa Ann. The two enjoyed a New York Knicks preseason basketball game (if you can do such a thing). They potentially had even more fun, because later that night a selfie of the two in bed surfaced. Someone might have had sex? Well, of course this is where Darren Rovell comes in.

After hearing about the date to the Knicks game and maybe seeing the aforementioned selfie, Rovell couldn’t take it anymore. He tweeted a screenshot of the sex section of the Notre Dame code of conduct (yes, Notre Dame has a sex section of its code of conduct). The rule states that students who engage in sexual union outside of marriage may be subject to referral to the University Conduct Process.

As the saying goes, nobody likes a snitch. College players have to deal with amateurism, which means they can’t make money off of their fame. Amateurism means that when a college jersey gets sold, a player gets nothing, despite the fact the jersey has the same exact jersey number as the one he wears every Saturday. If they can’t gain money from their fame, they should still be allowed to enjoy the notoriety that comes from being on national television and playing in front of stadiums filled with tens of thousands of screaming fans. Notre Dame may have special rules about the type of celebrities with which their players are allowed to associate, but I think the average sports fan feels that it’s kind of nice when 18-year-old athletes get to live a really cool life because of their sporting ability. The concept of paying them might get more complicated, but if famous people want to hang out with college athletes, why would anyone have a problem with that?

Darren Rovell doesn’t want anyone to have fun though, because he is a weird, nerdy, terms-and-conditions reading type of dude. For whatever reason, he felt some obligation to police the actions of players. With the access of information that Darren Rovell has, he could cover thousands of interesting sports and business stories. He could use his time to improve the lives of college athletes. The fact that he chooses to channel his influence into trying to get a college football player in trouble demonstrates the type of squid he truly is.

Notre Dame has not yet punished Justin Brent, and hopefully they won’t. At the end of the day, this will most likely be a non-story. But if there is one thing that I have learned as a consumer of sports media, it’s that when you get an easy chance to take a shot at Darren Rovell, you take that shot.