E:60 Starts Fall Season with Story on Ndamukong Suh

The fall season of ESPN’s award-winning newsmagazine program E:60 will launch on Tuesday, Sept. 2, with a feature on controversial Ndamukong Suh of the NFL’s Detroit Lions. The program airs at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN2.

As the Lions prepare to start their NFL season on Monday Night FootballE:60 and ABC News reporter Bob Woodruff seeks answers to the question of “who is Ndamukong Suh?” Is he the player in the headlines, a talented but troubled defensive tackle for the Lions? A three-time All-Pro voted the NFL’s dirtiest player by his peers? Or is he the modest and introverted 27-year-old who after his rookie NFL season was named America’s most charitable athlete?

With the NFL season kicking off later in the week, the season premiere episode also will include updated features on Seattle Seahawks RB Marshawn Lynch and New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin.

E:60’s ninth season continues the program’s reputation of presenting the biggest names and the best stories in sports with innovative long-form storytelling, enterprise reporting and production technique. Some of the stories airing later this season include:

  • A special report on the Ferguson, Mo., high school football team.
  • An all-access E:60 PROFILE of Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton.
  • E:60 PRESENTS: Morganna the Kissing Bandit.

Headlining the Fall 2014 episodes of E:60 are NFL personalities including Richard Sherman, Rob Ryan, Jason Witten, DeAngelo Hall, Gerald McCoy, Jamaal Charles and Marquise Goodwin, among others.

The E:60 brand has also expanded. In addition to the seasonal weekly newsmagazine, E:60 now producesE:60 PROFILE, a series of specials  on some of the biggest stars in sports (the first, on Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers, aired in 2010), and the Fall 2014 season turns the cameras on Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton. ESPN’s Cari Champion talks with Newton about his maturity as a NFL QB and the controversies surrounding him during his college career at Florida and Auburn.. His father, Cecil Newton Sr., speaks exclusively with E:60 in his first television interview since facing allegations of seeking payment from major college football programs in exchange for signing his son.

There also is E:60 PRESENTS, which debuted last fall with hour-long in-depth treatments of the best stories in sports.  This fall, a one-hour E:60 PRESENTS special focuses on the woman once known as “Morganna the Kissing Bandit.”  Before the internet, and before infamous moments could go viral, the voluptuous blonde became a pop culture icon in the 1970s and 80s by running onto Major League Baseball fields during games to kiss players.  In the late 90s, she suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from the spotlight, leaving people to wonder whatever happened to Morganna and why did she choose to run from the fame she craved for so long?  Now, after 15 years, Morganna breaks her silence to E:60′s Wright Thompson about her former infamy and the troubled life that led her there.

E:60 has become the ultimate destination for storytelling in sports,” said executive producer Andy Tennant. “And that’s a testament to the team of producers, editors, and correspondents on the show, who span the globe to find thought-provoking issues and important personal stories that need to be told, compelling stories that transcend the fields of play. Those stories take time to tell—and we’ve been giving them that time, and that attention, often running only three stories a week.”

Earlier this year, E:60 won the Sports Emmy Award for Journalism, for the report “Children of the Ring” by Jeremy Schaap, a hard look at the human rights issues surrounding the growing sport of children’s professional Muay Thai fighting in Thailand. E:60 has been honored with six national Sports Emmy awards, including three of the last four awarded in journalism, and nine nominations in the journalism category alone. Its report last season on human rights abuses in Qatar was among the most lauded stories ESPN has ever produced.

Other reporters who will be contributing to E:60 in the fall season are Lisa Salters, Tom Rinaldi, Chris Connelly and Jeffri Chadiha. E:60 is led by Tennant and coordinating producer Michael Baltierra.

Since 2007 E:60 has reported from Kenya, Sudan, India, Dominican Republic, Morocco, Mexico, Senegal, Philippines, Netherlands, Haiti, Costa Rica, South Africa, Ukraine, Serbia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Panama, Liberia, and the Middle East.

E:60 will air on Tuesday nights at 7 p.m. on ESPN2 for the first four episodes, then move to ESPN at 8 p.m. on ESPN beginning Tuesday, Sept. 30, and running through the fall season’s conclusion on Nov. 4. The schedule is subject to change.