ESPN Reporter Gets Blasted For Asking Carolina Panthers WR, Xavier Legette, About His Parents, Who Both Passed When He Was In High School

Casey Young·
CULTURESPORTS
·
Xavier Legette

Yikes… that’s really bad.

If you follow the NFL at all, then you know the Carolina Panthers have been struggling this season. This past week, they (somehow) pulled off an impressive comeback win against the Miami Dolphins (struggling as well), and former first round pick Xavier Legette had one of his best games of the season so far, including a touchdown catch, his first of the season.

Even if you don’t follow the NFL, you’ve probably seen a clip of Legette at some point on social media, as he’s had several viral moments from people loving his signature and shocking country twang, to his love for eating raccoons. Legette is a South Carolina native, and also played football at USC Columbia, and always comes across as super kind and down-to-Earth.

He’s easily one of the most lovable characters in professional sports, which is what makes this whole interaction even more frustrating.

During media time today in the Panthers locker room, ESPN reporter David Newton came at him with an extremely out of line question, first asking if Xavier followed the Cowboys at all when he was little (the Panthers didn’t get created as an NFL team until the mid-’90s, so there were lots of Cowboys fans in North Carolina and South Carolina until then).

But that wasn’t the issue… it came when he followed up Legette’s response that his dad was a Cowboys fan by saying he takes it that his dad “won’t be this week,” meaning he won’t be a Cowboy fan:

“I take it he won’t be this week.”

Xavier Legette tragically lost both of his parents while he was in high school, as his mother, Anita, died of breast cancer during his freshman year, and his father, Anthony, died of a heart attack during his senior year. It was obviously a traumatic and awful experience, and he’s spoken before about how hard it was to deal with that as a teenager, something no child should ever have to deal with.

You could tell how truly sad he was responding to that, saying back:

“Oh no, no. For sure ain’t a Cowboys fan no more.”

Newton has worked as ESPN’s Carolina Panthers reporter since 2013, and there have been many times where fans have criticize him over the years, for stupid questions like this. He knows good and well, as does everyone else who follows the Panthers, that Xavier’s parents passed away years ago.

If this is what you do for a living every day, there is no circumstance he should ever not know this about a players story, especially considering Legette was a first round draft pick and this is a huge piece of his life.

It’s unprofessional at BEST, and downright mean if we’re not giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming he was trying to make a joke. I tend to think he just had a brain lapse and maybe somehow forgot, but man… it’s a bad look. The look on Xavier’s face says it all:

The real kicker is that Newton had written about Xavier in the past, noting multiple times how he lost his parents:

The video has already been blowing up online, with tons of fans commenting on how out of line this was:

Do your homework, man…

Newton has since reached out to Legette and offered an apology.

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