Mike Lupica won't commit to 'The Sports Reporters' reboot

Mike Lupica is one of the most iconic personalities associated with the long-running ESPN show The Sports Reporters , which was recently rebooted by the Worldwide Leader. But while the 72-year-old former New York Daily News columnist still has plenty of strong sports opinions and stays busy as an author, he won’t commit to a return to the beloved show unless the new producers “respect” it and its legacy.

“If they’re going to bring it back, they’ve gotta respect it,” Lupica said Wednesday on The Michael Kay Show .

For Lupica, the informative nature and respectable tone of the show is what made it special and helped it contribute to ESPN’s history over its nearly three decades on air.

“We didn’t keep score, it wasn’t a shouting show,” Lupica said. “We got worked up sometimes … but if they’re going to bring it back, do it right and don’t do it in some half-a**ed way.”

Lupica also appears to still carry some hard feelings toward ESPN for how The Sports Reporters ended back in 2017, following the death of host John Saunders. To Lupica, ESPN had no reason to cancel the show.

“Why did it go away, Michael? Because a chucklehead named John Skipper at ESPN canceled it, that’s why,” Lupica told Kay. “We hadn’t lost a single rating point, we hadn’t lost a single sponsor. To this day, nobody (knows).”

Lupica is not the most well-respected ESPN personality ever, to put it lightly.

Page Six reported in 2017 that Lupica’s attitude was the reason Skipper canceled the show, after Lupica replaced Saunders as host. In a statement to Awful Announcing at the time, Skipper and ESPN denied those rumors .

That all makes it an open question whether Lupica would be invited back for the reboot, even if he were interested.

If The Sports Reporters does return , Lupica also doesn’t want it on YouTube, where current rumors have it airing. He wants it right back in its old slot, viewership changes be damned.

“I just don’t want it to be a reboot that doesn’t work,” Lupica said. “And if they want to put The Sports Reporters back on television, I’ll tell them what they can do. Put it on Sunday morning at 9:30, which is when they never should have taken it off of.”

As evidence for why the show deserved to return to Sunday mornings, Lupica pointed to the many star ESPN talents that came up through The Sports Reporters , from Adam Schefter to the Pardon the Interruption duo of Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser to Stephen A. Smith.

Lupica called the show “the gold standard” of ESPN content. And while that “chucklehead” Skipper is no longer in charge, it sure doesn’t sound like Lupica will be easy to get back on the new incarnation of the legendary program.

[ The Michael Kay Show on YouTube ]

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