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Dan Dakich reportedly won’t receive any punishment for his latest string of online run-ins, but his employers at ESPN have told him it’s behavior they don’t want to see going forward.
That was the word from the Indianapolis Star and Awful Announcing on Wednesday, a few days after Dakich again made headlines for his conduct on Twitter. While discussing the opt-out of Duke freshman Jalen Johnson, Dakich escalated disputes with a pair of professors, at one point going as far as doxxing one of them by reading out his office hours on his radio show.
Soon, Dakich’s Twitter account was deactivated, then reactivated, then deactivated again, while ESPN announced it was investigating the matter. One professor said Dakich had “debased and violated” her while going after her on his show.
The result of ESPN’s investigation, via the Star:
Sources told IndyStar ESPN has addressed the situation directly with Dakich and “made their concerns very clear to him.” Those conversations will not be made public, the sources said.
ESPN confirmed Wednesday Dakich is still employed as a college basketball analyst for the network, a job he’s held since 2010.
And here’s Awful Announcing’s take on it:
We’re now told that ESPN addressed the situation directly with Dan and made their concerns clear to him. So basically, he went to the principal’s office and was presumably told to cut it out.
ESPN’s schedule still has Dakich on the call for two games this weekend: Kent State at Buffalo on Friday and Virginia at Louisville on Saturday.
Dakich: ‘I’m on a short, short string’
In an interview with ESPN colleague Dan Shulman on Tuesday, Dakich alluded to his status with the network:
“Hey, how many of us have a lifetime deal in any of our worlds?” Shulman asked Dakich, referring to another person.
“Oh geez. I got none,” Dakich responded. “I’m on a string right now. I’m on a short, short string.”
Can Dan Dakich change what he is?
Dakich essentially got a warning, and it’s now up to him whether or not he requires further handling. The deletion of his Twitter account is a good start, as that website has been the setting of multiple controversies involving him over the last few years.
The former Bowling Green head coach and Indiana interim head coach has taken part in a litany of bizarrely hostile Twitter interactions, including with players, coaches, fanbases and fellow media members. His run-ins aren’t exclusively online though; he once received a mountain of blowback for condemning the firing of a high school basketball coach by calling a player a “methhead,” saying the town in question is full of “meth and AIDS and needles,” urging listeners to “take a dump” in the town and threatening to “just drive down there and beat the hell out of every school board member.”
Dakich was suspended from his radio station in 2019 for failing to “adhere to journalistic principles,” but with no specific offense revealed.
ESPN has never been keen on its employees engaging in anything like the above incidents, and it’s hard to imagine Dakich getting away with another such incident in the future. Of course, these run-ins seem to be a part of Dakich’s personality at some point, and expecting a change like that hasn’t worked out for ESPN in the past.
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