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From Dating In Bristol To The Berman Rule: Everything You Need To Know About Michelle Beadle’s ESPN Free Agency

Then, there’s the campus, which is so boring that it almost drove Keith Olbermann insane.

ESPN has a notoriously self-contained Bristol, Connecticut campus, where many of their employees are housed. Beadle lives in Bristol during the week, but doesn’t go out much and on weekends and is either in her apartment in New York or taking a trip with a network of friends who are spread throughout the country. She has friends in Bristol, but again, she doesn’t go out much when she’s there.

“It’s not the easiest place to live out here,” she said. “It’s not horrible, a lot of people are happy. Especially those with families and kids, but I’m a single woman and it’s a little more difficult. But it is what it is. It’s where ESPN is and you can’t change that.”

Her last inter-office romance, with hockey analyst Matthew Barnaby, ended after Barnaby was arrested for a domestic dispute in an incident involving his ex-wife. She told me she doesn’t date anyone who she works with (although she followed that up with “Never say never,” so there’s that, all of you schlubbily hopeful ESPN interns out there).

This decision to not date anyone you work with is obviously a reasonable one, especially after the last person you dated almost got deported for driving a car that was missing a wheel while you were drunk. But, as sound as Beadle’s decision is, it presents a very basic logistical issue: when you work in Bristol, there’s no one to date besides people you work with. Which eliminates… pretty much everyone.

ESPN’s campus has a reputation for being some sort of Aaron-Sorkin-directed sports media sex party but is, by most accounts, much more boring than that. Unless you have a family, or unless you are one of those freaks who’s fine with seeing the person they’re dating every day at the office, the social pickings are slim.

Are these bleak prospects a big enough reason for someone to leave? Not by themselves, of course. But I’d imagine it would at least play into any person’s decision — particularly one who is single.

When I asked Michelle Beadle if living in New York City full time — where the level of anonymity is high and the social scene is a bit more robust — would be attractive in a potential job, she pretty much immediately said it would be.

So, what do you do if you’re Michelle Beadle?

Beadle will not decide on a job because she doesn’t date people who work at ESPN. She will not decide on a job because CBS lets her moonlight on their other channels with her own late night show. She will not decide on a job because a deep-pocketed TV exec waltzes into a room and plunks down an obscene amount of cash, because she is young and good at what does and Dear Lord have you seen these ratings? Michelle Beadle can’t base her decision on any of that, because she has no idea what she wants to do right now.

(She does, however, know one thing she doesn’t want to do: “I don’t want to do sideline ever again.”)

Which brings us back to our original question: what do you do if you’re Michelle Beadle? Do you stay at ESPN, where you’ve grown good at what you do and where the unstoppable ESPN machine will continue to make you a big deal? Do you explore an offer with NBC, who will probably outspend your current employer and make you the centerpiece of their new 24-hour sports operation? Do you go in an entirely different direction, and explore as-of-yet-unknown non-sports avenues? Do you do some combination of these things? Leave your suggestions in the comments, or tweet them at me. If you have good ones, we’ll put them up on the site.

Regarding their upcoming Beadle contract talks, ESPN PR sent me this comment via email: “We are in discussions and are hopeful to have her continue at ESPN.”

Jim Miller, meanwhile, cannot say for certain whether she’ll stay or go. But he classified Beadle’s likelihood of remaining at ESPN as “less than 50/50.”

As for what type of non-sports opportunities they’d have to offer her to stay, he summed it up thusly:

“I’m not sure that she knows specifically. A lot of times you’re like the Supreme Court with pornography: you don’t know it until you see it. Why would you want to focus on one thing, when you can hear the other options?”

Starting today, those other options will be heard.

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Images via Getty and ESPN. Image of Beadle in the ring via Joe Swallia Photos.

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