One of the smaller aspects of the groundbreaking ESPN-NFL deal that was finalized this week is that it will see a league that the Worldwide Leader covers owning a direct stake in the company.

This is most unusual for an outlet like ESPN that produces journalism. After all, reporters are supposed to be independent fact-finders who bring audiences as close to the truth as possible about the biggest issues facing their communities. For a sports outlet, the NFL is one of the largest entities to report on.

With that in mind, as ESPN’s acquisition of several content assets in return for a 10 percent stake neared completion, many in the industry expressed concern over the company’s journalistic integrity in its reporting on professional football. Dan Patrick, a former ESPN host and longtime NFL chronicler, is, however, not worried at all.

Because to Dan Patrick, the “mothership” (as he calls it somewhat mockingly) stopped adhering to a high journalistic standard toward the league long ago.

“The journalist in me … would point out the conflict of interest,” Patrick said Wednesday on his radio show. “But ESPN can’t be any further in bed with the NFL when it comes to their coverage. Are they going to look the other way with whatever negative story comes up? They’ve probably already done that.”

Patrick went nearly two decades back to when the NFL put pressure on ESPN to cancel Playmakers, the hit scripted series based on a pro football team. But there are numerous other, similar examples. Bill Simmons was punished after he dared ESPN to suspend him over his sharp criticisms of commissioner Roger Goodell’s handling of footage of Ray Rice punching his partner in 2015.

The network also suspended Jemele Hill after a series of posts on X (then Twitter) calling Donald Trump a white supremacist and encouraging fans to boycott NFL sponsors in retaliation for the league’s treatment of Colin Kaepernick. Former ESPN president John Skipper even hinted once that the network might move on from NFL broadcasting.

At the same time, ESPN has cut back investment in journalism overall. As Patrick noted, magazine-style shows like Outside the Lines, The Sports Reporters, and E:60 are gone.

“They’re in the content business,” he said of ESPN.

This dynamic is not exclusive to ESPN. The single most valuable content rights in 2025 are NFL games. Every media distributor wants a piece. And if that media distributor also produces journalistic work, that work inherently runs the risk of souring the NFL’s view of that distributor.

“I don’t know if anybody’s going to hold the NFL, their feet, to the fire,” Patrick worried. “Everybody’s in bed with the NFL. All networks have partnerships here. As far as a conflict of interest, I think that’s long gone. I think there’s certain things that you’re just not going to cover.”

Right now, the NFL is riding high. They have largely moved past prominent incidents of domestic violence, their mishandling of the brain trauma crisis, and the alleged blackballing of players like Colin Kaepernick, who protested against racial injustice in the 2010s.

That guarantees nothing. The league is bound to face another scandal at some point. Something the league does not want attention on. And with the fortunes of ESPN, Fox, CBS, NBC, and more bound directly to the NFL, leverage is high on the league’s side.

But Dan Patrick believes this has been the case for a long time. The new partnership between ESPN and the NFL just makes it official.

“Maybe you don’t care about it. Being a dinosaur, I do,” Patrick said. “Because the NFL should be held accountable for certain things. But the NFL, I’m sure, does not want [that]. ‘Hey we own part of you.’ Ten percent. Well, the NFL has probably owned a lot of ESPN for a long period of time. It’s just not official, that’s all.”