A week ago, one of the most inventive projects in ESPN’s history — and a personal favorite of mine — was snuffed out. “Highly Questionable” was a sports talk show that began in September  2011 that managed to capture the elusive quality that all ESPN shows presumably shoot for: to seem like a natural conversation between friends. 

While I missed the beginning half of the show’s run, I became somewhat of an avid watcher in 2018 and followed the show through to its cancellation this week. Every time I tuned in, all I could think about was how much fun the people making it must be having.

The show was originally hosted by Dan Le Batard: a veteran of Miami sports talk radio and a longtime columnist for the Miami Herald. The show was brought about by former ESPN head honcho John Skipper in an effort to increase viewership in the Hispanic community. But it took Le Batard —  who was very loyal to his Miami audience — an incredible amount of convincing to take the helm of a national show. 

Skipper would later say in an interview on Le Batard’s South Beach Sessions podcast, “I didn’t get a lot of noes from local journalists at newspapers who didn’t want to make the move to something national … I found it admirable.” 

It was out of this initial reluctance and Skipper’s strong desire to have Le Batard on his network that the out-of-the-box nature of the show — originally titled “Dan Le Batard is Highly Questionable”— was born. Several aspects of the show broke the mold of ESPN’s typical fare and allowed for “Highly Questionable” to establish its own identity amongst a crowded field of sports talk programming throughout the media. 

The show was broadcast, for most of its run, at the Clevelander Hotel on South Beach in Miami, Florida, not in ESPN’s flagship studios in Bristol, Connecticut. 

The show was not co-hosted by a pundit or a former athlete. Instead, Le Batard’s 68-year-old dad, Gonzalo “Papi” Le Batard — a Cuban exile who immigrated to the United States in 1961— would assume the role of sidekick, though later it seemed that those roles were reversed.

The show also introduced audiences to many of the network’s best young talent. Such personalities as Mina Kimes, Katie Nolan and Pablo Torre began their careers at ESPN, appearing on “Highly Questionable.”

The show always remained a rule-breaker even amongst the most innovative shows on the network. It would regularly have on-air moments that made audiences laugh hysterically, and likely made executives sweat profusely. 

On what other sports show, or any other show for that matter, can you picture the members of rap-group Rae Sremmurd willingly teaching a 70-year-old how to “whip”? 

What talk show other than “Highly Questionable” can you imagine asking rock climber Alex Honnold of “Free Solo” fame how he poops while scaling mountains? Who else would it even occur to ask such a question?

More importantly, the show strayed from the performative hot-takes, gratuitous bravado and shouting matches that dominate ESPN today. Making sports fun is a strangely difficult task in media. Hosts often take themselves and their subject matter too seriously, valuing whether or not they win an argument over anything else.

But special things can never last long in corporate machines, and this was the case for Dan Le Batard and “Highly Questionable.” After many public and private battles with his bosses throughout the years, Dan announced that Jan. 4, 2021 would be his last day at ESPN.

The show hung on through early 2021 and into the summer, with a rotating slew of the aforementioned young talent of HQ taking over the hosting duties. It seemed destined, though, that without Dan Le Batard at the helm the show would eventually be canceled. The cancellation was officially announced this month and the final episode aired Sept. 10. 

The cancellation of “Highly Questionable” and the show which replaced it signifies a change in ESPN’s business model. Due to declining subscriber numbers and overall revenues, the network has increasingly pivoted towards becoming a network solely consisting of games and highlights with short spurts of Stephen Smith and Mike Greenberg in between.

“Highly Questionable” began at a moment at ESPN where money was of no concern. The network had the resources and also the willingness to try something new. This is no longer the case, and the byproduct of that is evident in all of the decisions they make today. 

Since leaving ESPN, Dan Le Batard has joined forces with Skipper, the man responsible for bringing him to national airwaves, to create a new startup sports venture called Meadowlark Media. Hopefully, leading to content with the same spirit and quality that “Highly Questionable” had for a decade. 

But until then, we’ll always have clips of Papi’s handshake fakeouts.