Silence of the Ham: Has ESPN Suspended Darren Rovell from Twitter?

If you’ve noticed an eerie calmness in the Twittersphere, it may be due to a decrease in Darren Rovell emissions over the last 36 hours.

The ESPN business reporter/tweet machine has yet to post to the social media platform after sending out an apologetic message to his 460,000 followers on Sunday.

As of this writing, Rovell’s last tweet apologized for using “poor judgment” for a prior dispatch.

According to Dave McKenna of Deadspin, the tweet Rovell referenced included a picture of an obese Chicago Bulls fan sitting in courtside seats at Sunday night’s Eastern Conference playoff game against the Washington Wizards.

Rovell’s tweet read “Cost of 2 courtside seats (to) tonight’s Bulls game is $5K (H/T @MitchKatz).”

Rovell’s apology and subsequent silence could mean two things. The knee-jerk reaction would be to assume ESPN has told its star business reporter to lay off the social media for a spell.

A competing theory is that Rovell voluntarily benched himself and is keeping his finely coiffed hair buried deep in an Internet foxhole until suppressing fire ends. Perhaps he felt he had finally erred in judgment and decided a reflective social media fast was in order. 

With that said, sometimes the simplest answer is the most likely. If one were to Occam’s razor their way through this soup, one could deduce ESPN has placed Rovell in Twitter timeout.

It wouldn’t be the first time ESPN suspended a high-profile personality from the platform. Last March, the network reportedly suspended Bill Simmons from Twitter for tweets denouncing an awkward First Take segment.

The segment Simmons refused to endorse involved Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman and Skip Bayless going at each other like mortal enemies on live television. 

The question remains, however: Did ESPN nail Rovell for insensitive remarks? Again, we can’t know for sure. 

I do know this, however: A silent Rovell isn’t business as usual. Twitter without #DarrenDollars is Los Angeles without a thick layer of smug smog.

Healthier? Yes. Normal? Most certainly not.

#SilenceOfTheHam

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