ESPN Sports Reporter Chris Mortensen DD at age 72

[ftpjesus]

Mortensen started his career at the Atlanta Journal Constitution in the early 80s. He was one of the first writers hired by Frank DeFord at The National in 89. His biggest move was when he was hired by ESPN in 1991, where he covered the NFL on multiple shows including GameDay even as part of the Sunday Night Football crew and was seen as part of the ESPN NFL Draft coverage for over 2 decades. He last involvement with ESPN was roughly a year ago at the 2023 NFL Draft.

One of the biggest stories was Mortensen was considered to be the one who broke the Deflategate story regarding the Patriots where he claimed 11 of the 12 footballs were under inflated deliberately in the AFC title game. The investigation by the NFL said it was only 1 that was under inflated by 2lbs as Mortensen claimed the rest were 0.2-1.8 under pressure. Mortensen refused to ever retract his comments and stood by his story.

Mortensen was diagnosed with Stage IV throat cancer in 2016 but it did go into remission ultimately. It’s unknown if the cancer possibly returned and was the cause of his death today.

[tgull]

That's too bad. I have not watched ESPN in like 7 years outside an occasional College game. The network went woke, and lost me as a viewer forever. Glad to see their declining audience is literally crippling Disney. I remember in my 20s and even my 30s, it was what I watched when waking up. Never again.

Reminds me of Drudge. When he sold in 2019 to that left wing Google lady I just took it out of the rotation as well.