Columnist Jason Whitlock earlier this week announced he is leaving FoxSports.com for ESPN and said ESPN President John Skipper "carved out a vision for me, what he would like to have me do," that was "everything I wanted to hear." Whitlock on ESPN.com's "The BS Report" said, "For lack of a better description, and I hope this isn't offensive, but I'm going to get to do something along the lines of a black Grantland. Man, that was like music to my ears." He said he would "love to work with some young people and to really have a chance to influence sports culture and the sports world with some young people that ... are going to try to be original thinkers." ESPN's Bill Simmons said, "The last time I checked until a couple of weeks ago, you were a big part of this Fox Sports re-launch. ... You were supposed to be on that three-hour show at 11:00pm every night. They were carving out something for you." Whitlock said the report of him being involved with "Fox Sports Live" was a "bit premature and not completely accurate with the situation of me and Fox Sports." Whitlock: "I am, at the end of the day, a writer. ... I had been trying to get Fox Sports to understand me more as a writer and what my goals there were as a writer, and then I'm more than happy to do television and more than happy to do radio. I think I'm good at those things, but what makes me happiest every day is being a sports columnist." He continued, "I struggled, I think, in trying to get them to understand that about me and to get them to understand that perhaps that what I did in written form didn't match up with their vision of how they wanted their web site to go" ("The BS Report," ESPN.com, 8/15).
