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Washington coach Chris Petersen and ESPN are beefing: Here’s why
By Adam Spencer
Published:
If you live in the Eastern time zone (or even the Central time zone, really), you can be forgiven if you didn’t realize the Washington Huskies were 6-0 and the No. 5 team in the AP Poll.
That’s because coach Chris Petersen’s squad keeps getting late kickoff times, which oftentimes don’t even start until 10:30 p.m. on the East Coast.
Petersen recently called out ESPN for that trend, and the Worldwide Leader didn’t accept the criticism well.
During Saturday night’s big 38-7 win over Cal, the sideline reporter used three cupcakes in order to depict Washington’s weak non-conference schedule:
.@QKessenich’s props to break down UW’s nonconference schedule… pic.twitter.com/9lbEhXbR8K
— Evan Webeck (@EvanWebeck) October 8, 2017
Then, according to the Seattle Times, broadcaster Mark Jones had some choice words for Petersen during the airing of the game:
“So 38-7 (is the score) for Washington, an impressive performance,” Jones said. “And maybe this will assuage the irascible and somewhat cantankerous head coach, Chris Petersen. … He didn’t have much time for us this week.”
It should be noted that Petersen never meets with the broadcast crew before games — ESPN or not. But still, this week it took on a bit of an extra meaning.
For his part, though, Petersen said in his postgame interview that he’s hoping to move on so he can focus on winning games:
“I think we just need to move on to a new topic,” he said. “Let’s pick something next week that we can really care about. I think we beat this one up enough.”
Things won’t get better for the Huskies this weekend, as their game at Arizona State kicks off at 10:45 Eastern time on — you guessed it — ESPN.
Adam is a daily fantasy sports (DFS) and sports betting expert. A 2012 graduate of the University of Missouri, Adam now covers all 16 SEC football teams. He is the director of DFS, evergreen and newsletter content across all Saturday Football brands.
