'She went through some real bleep’: Damon Amendolara defends joining Dianna Russini’s BetUS show

Damon Amendolara accepted Dianna Russini's invitation to her BetUS debut without a second thought, though defending that choice took him the better part of 12 minutes.

Amendolara said in a video posted to his YouTube channel on Wednesday that his appearance on The Russini Report boiled down to loyalty. Russini has been a close friend for years, he explained, and he would gladly join any friend's show if asked, especially one who had weathered the kind of turbulent year she has.

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"I would hope all my friends know this: that everybody needs your close circle of allies and confidants and friends and family when you go through some real bleep. And she went through some real bleep," Amendolara said. "No matter where you stand on the matter, she went through real stuff, and I'm not going to sit here when a friend of mine has gone through real stuff and not be there when they need me, or they ask me to."

That "real stuff" began earlier this year, when photos of Russini with Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel at an Arizona resort set off a scandal that ended with her resignation from The Athletic and a months-long retreat from public life. Her return this week arrived on two fronts, with BetUS signing her to a weekly show and column on a reportedly multiyear deal and former ESPN colleague Jon "Stugotz" Weiner partnering with her on a new podcast called Nobody's Safe that the two will cohost.

The BetUS portion of that return got off to an inauspicious start, as Awful Announcing's Drew Lerner detailed.

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The Russini Report, which the show's X account advertised with Amendolara, Bill Parcells and Spike Eskin as guests, failed to launch at its scheduled noon ET start on Wednesday, leaving viewers staring at a looping 90-second clip set to elevator music while the account insisted a "record-breaking audience" had broken the stream. The episode eventually surfaced on Vimeo roughly 50 minutes late and appeared to have been prerecorded.

Amendolara and Russini first crossed paths when she was covering Washington's NFL team, and he was working at CBS Sports Radio, where he regularly brought her on to help untangle the constant dysfunction of Dan Snyder's ownership. Those segments grew into a lasting friendship, which is why Amendolara said he didn't bat an eye when Russini asked him onto her first episode.

"Whenever I've had her on, we've laughed and joked and talked football and just, I think, overall had a really positive vibe, and I wanted to help present that in the first episode so that people remember that side of Dianna versus all of the craziness that has happened," he said.

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Amendolara left it to viewers to decide how they feel about Russini, but he had far less patience with how his own industry responded. Leaning on his broadcast journalism degree from Syracuse's Newhouse School, where he studied media ethics, he contended that the outrage hinged on a lofty standard that few of the people championing it ever uphold themselves.

"I just think our industry went crazy and got completely topsy-turvy by demanding the big J by not doing any of the big J things," Amendolara said.

In his 12-minute diatribe, Amendolara pointed to several ethical gray areas that the sports media establishment routinely condones, whether it's leagues partnering with sportsbooks, insiders holding ownership stakes in betting apps, or reporters buying an open bar for NFL coaches at the annual league meetings — not exactly the Woodward and Bernstein school of sourcing. Yet the industry tolerates it because nuts-and-bolts reporting seldom pays these days, he argued, leaving even news-breakers to cultivate personalities on social media, offer opinions, and make the guest rounds in a business where being interesting has become the most valuable currency.

"I've got everybody in this industry that's banging the gavel on big journalism while not actually doing it themselves," Amendolara said. "And I was never comfortable with that."

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As for Russini, she's maintained that the coverage of her relationship with Vrabel was riddled with lies, even as Awful Announcing's Matt Yoder pointed out in his column that she has never specified what any of those lies were. And while Russini has offered little acknowledgment of her own role in the scandal, Amendolara believes the sources who still trust her and the support she retains around the NFL have earned her a pathway back.

"I think BetUS is cool for saying we'll do this," Amendolara said. "We'll give you the microphone, we'll give you the space, we'll give you the internal resources to do what you do best, which is talk football."

The post Damon Amendolara explains why he appeared on Dianna Russini's comeback show appeared first on Awful Announcing.