You may have seen or heard about this from the weekend, but Danyelle Sargent -- a middling TV sports reporter who shouldn't really be famous -- made her second embarrassing gaffe in less than three years on Sunday. Mind you, this is the second nationwide-realized gaffe -- who knows how often she effs up on local stuff.
First of all, let's just recap who Danyelle is (besides someone whose parents didn't know how to spell "Danielle"). In March 2006, she was working on ESPNews and they had a technical glitch, which made Danyelle uncomfortable... and since she's evidently helpless without a script, she had no idea how to vamp and so when her partner, Robert Flores, took over the highlights, you can hear Danyelle express her frustration at about the 45-second mark.
Yes, that was a supposed professional TV person screaming "What the f-ck was that?" over live air. Supposedly she thought her mic was off, but even if it was, somebody's mic was on in the vicinity -- does screaming obscenities really make sense anywhere on a live set? I'm just asking, because I'm no expert.
So anyway, back to Sunday, when Danyelle was interviewing Niners new coach Mike Singletary and said the following:
"I heard that your mentor Bill Walsh was one of the first phone calls that you made when you found out that you had the job. What does it mean to you to be the head coach of the 49ers?"
That would be quite a scoop, actually, considering that Bill Walsh has been dead for over a year.
Now, the surrounding detail is that Sargent was not live and this was being recorded to be run right before kickoff, and when her producer caught her mistake he stopped her via her earbud. Danyelle stopped and asked what she messed up and then she apologized to Singletary and continued the interview. What she didn't realize until the next day was that Fox had apparently opened up the feed of that interview -- raw feed and all -- to whomever wanted it. Evidently, sometimes other affiliates like to horn in on things like that and broadcast them. Obviously, nobody was going to broadcast a broken interview but that didn't stop somebody from uploading it to YouTube (it's since been taken down). And then Danyelle was upset.
I just listened to her on Dan Patrick's show on Sporting News Radio via XM and she said she meant to say she heard Singletary's first call was to Bill Walsh when he "decided to get into coaching," and that she didn't even realize she had misspoken until her producer told her. Dan Patrick, whom I am a big fan of, actually seemed pissed on her behalf that Fox didn't do more to squash the footage.
A few things here....
For one, Fox DID squash the footage, having it removed from everywhere. I'd be surprised if you can find it. So they tried, but it's hard to put a lid on stupid -- eventually is leaks out.
And as for her story on what she meant to say, I call BS on that story. It's a lie if I ever heard one. It doesn't even make sense... I heard you called Bill Walsh when you decided to get into coaching... like a couple years ago? What does that have to do with Sunday? Face it, Danyelle, you screwed up because you didn't do your homework -- the most basic of homework -- and you forgot Bill Walsh was dead. And don't get me wrong -- we all make dumb mistakes. But not all of us are trying to be taken seriously as a female sportscaster.
This wasn't like one of Tim McCarver's inane ramblings or one of the stupid things Joe Morgan says.... this was her second major blunder, to the point where I really think she should be asking herself if she's in the right profession.