ESPN Football Analyst Walks Away, Disturbed by Brain Trauma on Field<br />“You could put him on any game, and you knew he’d be rock solid<br />and prepared and opinionated and smart and thoughtful,” said Lee Fitting, an ESPN senior coordinating producer who oversees college football coverage for the network.<br />I love football — college football, pro football, any kind of football.<br />“I could hardly disagree with anything he said,” Patrick, who will have a new broadcast<br />partner this season in Cunningham’s absence, said in a phone interview.<br />“Announcers are part of the industrial complex of college football,<br />and I think we’ve turned a blind eye toward the violence — we have to protect these kids,” Cunningham said at the time.<br />“I don’t feel that my being part of covering the National Football League is perpetuating danger,” he said in a phone interview.<br />LONG BEACH, Calif. — If Ed Cunningham had not already seen enough, he would be back in a broadcast booth on Saturday<br />afternoon, serving as the color analyst for another top college football game televised on ABC or ESPN.<br />“I’ve been in the business 20 years and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard of anything like that,” Fitting said.<br />“I was being paid a really nice six-figure salary for not a lot of days of work,<br />and a live television gig that, except for nonsports fans, people would beat me up to take,” Cunningham said.
