A new report from Katie Strang and Andrew Marchand of The Athletic states that former ESPN producer Lee Fitting has been fired from the company amid misconduct allegations.

According to the report, Fitting “made comments that objectified women, criticized their physical appearance, and made crude jokes, some of them of a sexual nature.” A lawsuit was filed against Fitting in 2023. He was fired from the company in August 2023.

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Fitting has been with ESPN for over 25 years, most notably producing ESPN College GameDay.

From The Athletic:

Around 2012, some ESPN employees were watching the NCAA men’s basketball tournament from a conference room in Bristol when Fitting allegedly commented on a woman (who was not present and did not work at ESPN) and her ability to “open her throat.” “. He drank a beer and then joked that the woman was good at performing fellatio, according to a person present. (The Athletic also spoke with a former ESPN employee who was told by the person in attendance about the alleged comment.) Fitting said through his spokesman that this incident never happened.

At a production meeting in 2014, there were no chairs available for an employee. Fitting patted his lap and told her, “I have a place for you here,” according to a person in the room and another person who was informed of the remark by another person present. Fitting denied this accusation. An ESPN employee said Fitting sent her a text message around 2018 that said, “You look hot.” She showed the text to a producer, who recalled shaking the woman’s hand as she approached Producers showed the message.

According to “College GameDay” officials, he jokingly asked an employee her hotel room number on more than one occasion and also regularly joked about conducting bed checks. Fitting denied these allegations. He also allegedly bragged about his and his wife’s robust sex life, according to multiple sources.

If he saw a woman in an outfit he liked, he would let her know, sometimes in a way that women and other employees found rude and/or demeaning. He once shouted “Damn!” when a woman appeared on set wearing a skirt he liked. Comments like this were so common that a College GameDay employee developed a strategy to mitigate his behavior. Whenever he said or did something inappropriate, she would open a notebook and pretend to write something down. When Fitting asked what she was doing, she replied, “I’m just writing it down for the book.”

Many women who worked on “College GameDay” and elsewhere at ESPN as part of “Fitting” said they felt pressured to go out for drinks and tolerate the inappropriate comments because they feared being ostracized if they didn’t present themselves as members of the boys’ club. Before or after saying something rude or sexist, Fitting sometimes used the phrase “It’s okay, she’s one of the guys” to justify why his remark was acceptable, sources said. When an employee left the show, Fitting dismissed her as “no fun” in front of a group of employees, according to one person present.

Some women who appeared on camera were told by Fitting how to style their hair, how much makeup to wear, and which outfits he liked and disliked. Sometimes he referred to aspects of their bodies that he advised them to hide.

One woman said that one day, when she and Fitting were working at different locations, he saw her on an internal feed and wrote to her that he liked her ponytail. She brushed off the comment, but he wrote again: “Put your hair up in a ponytail.” The woman replied that she had already done her hair and makeup for the day, to which Fitting replied, “Put your hair up “In a ponytail before I do that for you.” (Fitting denied he would put her hair up if she didn’t.)

Another woman said that in addition to commenting on her makeup and wardrobe, Fitting told her to stop laughing on the show because he found her laughter annoying. (The Athletic spoke to a person who she later told about this exchange.)

“You already have these things in the back of your mind. “And then when someone thinks you can’t advance in your career because you don’t check a box, that awareness can turn into insecurity,” one woman said.

Fitting said through his spokesperson that it is his job to provide male and female on-air talent with feedback on their appearance and on-air performance.

Fitting commented on women’s looks so often that judging women in this way became an integral part of how he ran the show. In the production truck, he directed people to scan the crowd for “hot” women to be featured on the show, according to several people who worked with him. In 2012, College GameDay was held in South Bend, Indiana, which hosted a game between Notre Dame and Stanford in October. Fitting had a problem with the crowd shot behind the studio set: the Notre Dame cheerleaders in the shot weren’t attractive enough. They’re not Oregon cheerleaders, he noted. (Fitting had a particular fondness for the Oregon cheerleaders, several people said, citing comments he had made about them over the years.) When Fitting ordered the Irish cheerleaders denied the shot, no one batted an eyelid.

Another ESPN employee said she asked to meet with Fitting three times to discuss career options. Each time he asked her to meet him for a drink, she said. She declined because she said other women at ESPN had told her not to meet Fitting alone outside of work. Another employee said: “Women had warned each other to be careful when interacting with him.” Fitting said through his spokesman that it was common for him to have drinks with men and women as part of his job.

Fitting was hired by WWE to produce WWE Raw and WWE SmackDown in January 2024.

Fitting, through a spokesperson for The Athletic, denied some of the allegations made against him while choosing not to address others. He declined to comment on the broader characterization of him as someone who mistreated women during his tenure at ESPN or the reasons he was fired from the network.

A WWE spokesperson told The Athletic the company had no comment on the allegations against Fitting.

WWE is named in an active lawsuit filed by former employee Janel Grant, who accused Vince McMahon of sexual assault and sex trafficking.