ESPN cracks down on anti-Semitic fantasy football team names

ESPN is cracking down on offensive and racially-motivated fantasy football team names at the urging of a Jewish rights organization.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center brought the issue to the attention of ESPN yesterday, beginning the process of removing teams with anti-Semitic names.

According to Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the issue was brought to light after a Jewish father attempted to sign his son up for a fantasy football league.

"This is another example of bigots leveraging Internet portals to demean their 'enemies' and recruit for their causes. Unfortunately, the targeted enemy in this case was a Jewish father who was about to sign up his son to ESPN Fantasy Football," Cooper said.

ESPN’s Vice President of Communications Josh Krulewitz condemned the team names, stating that ESPN has a system in place to help prevent owners from posting offensive team names.

Offensive hate speech like the examples discussed here, have absolutely no place on our site. While we have systems in place to minimize the possibility for inappropriate team and league names, clearly with millions of users and deceptive ways around the safeguards, we can never completely eliminate it,” Krulewitz said.

Krulewitz also stressed that the ESPN appreciates when it’s users become whistleblowers and bring these types of issues to their attention.

“We very much appreciate when it's brought to our attention like you did in this case, and when it is, we pledge to move swiftly to address each case...the entry period for fantasy football is ending soon so no additional entries will be allowed. We will use that time to reflect on how we can improve this going forward. Thanks so much for your valued input," Krulewitz said.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center praised ESPN for their swift action and cooperation.

"ESPN responded quickly and in good faith to our concerns and we trust that ESPN will all necessary steps to make it as difficult as possible for any racist or anti-Semite to leverage their popular site,” Cooper said.