Rich's Guide to Shouldering

Rich has a grievance, and he's going to make the crew sit through it. The ESPN PR team has been great since the merger of NFL Network's draft coverage with ESPN. Everyone has been awesome. The Sports Center appearance went well. Women's Sports Now has been smooth. Until today.

Susie sends him a mock-up. It's a group photo promoting the NFL Draft coverage with the on-air team photoshopped together. Rich is on the far left. The picture of him has to be from 2018 or earlier, based on the beard length, which means ESPN PR dug up a shot that's potentially a decade old.

That's not the problem. The problem is shoulder.

Rich explains the doctrine. In any group photo of on-air talent, he is always focused on shoulder placement. Who has shoulder on whom. They never put people shoulder to shoulder. Somebody is always in front of somebody else. It matters because the person with shoulder on the others reads as the lead.

Charles Davis has shoulder on Rich. Charles is a nice man and a longtime colleague, and Rich has told him to his face he never wants to do the draft without him, so fine. But then there's Joel Klatt, who is on Fox, and who has shoulder on everybody. Klatt is also holding the microphone in the shot, which makes him look like the host. Rich calls him Klattus Knight and the rest of them the Pips.

Ian Rapoport has shoulder on Kurt Warner. Daniel Jeremiah has shoulder on Kurt Warner. Kurt Warner, a Super Bowl MVP, has two shoulders on him. Rich finds this particularly unacceptable given the distance Kurt is traveling to be at the draft. Meanwhile, Joel Klatt is booked for only Thursday and Friday, and he's positioned as the MC.

Rich is on the draft set from pick one to pick Mr. Irrelevant.

The bit keeps building. Ian looks angry, like he's been scooped. The photoshop makes Ian and Kurt appear the same height, which Rich notes is baffling because Kurt has a foot on him in real life. Rich acknowledges he could have handled this off-air, off-line, behind the scenes. That would not be consistent. It would not be real. He says he did this kind of thing for 23 years with NFL Network PR, and ESPN PR should get used to it.

The crew tries to calm him down. It's a good photo of him. He's first in the lineup. Americans read left to right, so he gets the first look. Rich concedes the point and then drives it home one more time. Shoulder care. That's all he's asking for. Shoulder care.

He thanks the graphic artist who photoshopped the image together, genuinely, because the promotion is nice to have. He's already providing a replacement photo, the most broad-shouldered one he can find.

Somebody is getting an update request on a Tuesday afternoon. Somebody is going to learn what shoulder means.