ESPN pulls broadcaster from Charlottesville game because his name is Robert Lee

Aug. 23, 2017 7:50 AM PT

Robert E. Lee was an American general who commanded the Confederate Army more than 150 years ago. A statue in his honor has been the cause of great controversy in Charlottesville, Va., where a white nationalist rally protesting the city’s planned removal of the landmark turned deadly earlier this month.

Meanwhile, Robert Lee is a part-time sportscaster for ESPN who finds himself in the center of a much different controversy.

He was slated to broadcast the William & Mary-Virginia football game for the network on Sept. 2. But because the announcer shares the same name as the Civil War icon and the game is taking place in the same city as the recent violent events, Lee has been pulled from ESPN’s coverage of that contest and now will be handling the play-by-play duties at another game on the same day.

The move was first made public Tuesday by the website Outkick the Coverage. ESPN later released the following statement:

“We collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, simply because of the coincidence of his name. In that moment it felt right to all parties. It’s a shame that this is even a topic of conversation and we regret that who calls play-by-play for a football game has become an issue.”

An ESPN spokesperson told the New York Times that the decision was made with the announcer’s safety in mind. Also, according to USA Today, executives at ESPN worried that images of their Robert Lee reporting on a game in Charlottesville “would show up in Twitter memes and posts on websites like Awful Announcing or Deadspin.”

If the latter is true, their plan backfired. The network has been ridiculed and mocked on social media since the decision was announced, and on Wednesday morning, #RobertLee was trending on Twitter.