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Internally, this is a little bit of an inside-the-Beltway problem that we care about because we care about the reputation of our company. It matters for our business; it matters to us; it matters to our employees, who are proud of the company. So that’s what’s disappointing—we’re all proud of our company and what we do, and to have this blemish on it is disappointing, although that’s all it is, a superficial blemish. It does not, I believe, affect what we do from day to day. It matters, in the same way you’d go to a dermatologist if you had something sitting on your cheek and were trying to get it off. But it doesn’t prevent me from driving or jogging or going out to dinner, as long as I wear a Band-Aid.

RECE DAVIS:

We have to serve the fan—but the best way you can serve the fan is by being a pro, by being honest, and by being fair. And if you start falling into reading Deadspin, Awful Announcing, Ohio State blog, Alabama blog, and Texas blog, and every time they don’t like something you see, you try to either explain it the next time you come on-air or you change it or you get upset about it, you probably aren’t doing your job as effectively as you ought to be.

BOB LEY:

I check in from time to time with the sports blogs—Deadspin, Awful Announcing, or The Big Lead—but it’s like shopping in a discount store. I say that with respect; there’s some good stuff, but you’ve got to find what’s interesting beyond the prurient stuff and the stuff that’s rumor-based. They’re devilishly well written. When Will Leach was writing for Deadspin, you’d read stuff that was wet-your-pants funny.

I’ve told my kids and my wife, “Do not google me. You will not come away happy.” I know they’ve done it anyway. It’s the shit out there that’s written about you that is quasi-satiric, venal, vindictive, whatever, that you don’t want your family to see. So I tell people around the office, “Don’t google yourself. It will not end well.”

MATTHEW BERRY, Football Analyst:

I come from the Howard Stern school of broadcasting. I am a huge, huge Howard Stern fan. I think there are a lot of important lessons, regardless of whether you like his content or not, that you can learn from how he conducts his business and how he works as a broadcaster. One thing I think Howard is brilliant at is, he is 100 percent honest. He says, “Here’s the guy who hates me, here’s the guys who love me.” That’s what I would love to do, but obviously I am not always able to do that. The ESPN brand is bigger than any individual brand. In Howard’s world, Howard’s the biggest brand, but in this particular case, ESPN’s brand is much, much bigger than mine or anyone else’s. So, unfortunately, I can’t always be as honest as I want to be.

Prior to coming to ESPN, I would respond to a lot of criticism, and I would say, “Here’s right and here’s wrong.” That’s one of the things I’m known for, printing hate mail and making fun of it. Sometimes I’ll just say, “Hey, you caught me, I can’t predict the future.” What are you going to do? I’m a human being and there are times when it gets tough, where you’re like, Wow, that person has really gotten personal. But you get more and more used to it. There used to be a time when I responded to every single e-mail, positive or negative, and now there are just too many. I literally get thousands a day. There are not enough hours in the day, unfortunately. So “detachment” is a good word.

“Appropriate measures” in the matter of Bill Simmons and his testy tweets on Twitter were taken in November 2009. ESPN Radio had been in business with Boston’s WEEI just one month when a nasty wound was reopened. Simmons still lived in Boston then and was known as The Boston Sports Guy. He had never been a fan of the station’s afternoon sports show, nor pretended to be, and its hosts attacked him in response. One can only imagine, then, Simmons’s reaction to learning that ESPN had made WEEI a part of the network’s ever-expanding family, because that meant Simmons could appear only on that station when he did