Ex-ESPN Employee Prepping Tell-All About Network, Lawsuits

In bizarre meltdown, Sean Salisbury threatens suit against sports network, CBS Radio and Deadspin.

Media meltdowns like these are the stuff of legend.

And as far as this one goes, it’s already legendary.

Sean Salisbury, a former NFL quarterback, ESPN football analyst and radio talk show host, unleashed a bizarre barrage of e-mails to Deadspin.com, Gawker Media’s sports blog (disclosure: I cover tennis for Deadspin) this week. In them, he claims he is preparing to sue the site, CBS Radio and ESPN for publishing and/or telling “lies” about him.

Salisbury also claims he is working on a tell-all book about the Worldwide Leader in Sports, titled (allegedly and tentatively, of course) “ESPN Exposed.”

Among roughly a dozen e-mails Salisbury sent Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio, this one is the most newsworthy:

For the record. U guys r being sued be a vicious attorney as is CBS and espn. And I will win with the proof. And yes for the record that book is being written and will rock the foundation of that company. Stuff that the sports world will not believe. I’m done being nice so prepare urself and u go ahead and put all of it on there because with the things I know folks are gonna be running for the hills. I will restore my reputation in a huge way. And by the way the girl u guys tracked down after two years who lied about the cell phone shit that u guys ran with a few months ago is the same woman who begged me on three different occasions to have sex with her and I said no. So she will be exposed as well. Damn I can’t wait for all this.

Fascinating. (Also, to Salisbury’s current and/or eventual book editor, good luck with that.)
 
Gawker Media says it has yet to be contacted by Salisbury’s "vicious attorney". (I called an ESPN spokesperson to see if they’ve heard from Salisbury; I haven’t heard from them.)

In far less interesting legal news, Gawker has, however, been contacted by Marty Singer, the attorney for Rebecca Gayheart and Eric Dane, who are suing Gawker $1 million for copyright infringement over the posting of the so-called “McSteamy Sex Tape.”

Gawker czar Nick Denton took to Twitter to tweak Mr. Berman and his clients’ case:

“To quote the great Marty Singer — Eric Dane’s lawyer — if you don’t want a sex tape on the internet, ‘don’t make one!’”

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