How Not To Have A Career In Sports Journalism

[Mr. Scot]

Sarah Phillips, ESPN’s alleged scam artist, admits making ‘poor choices’

Phillips, who posted around 10 items per month for ESPN since she was hired in September, was terminated Tuesday after Deadspin identified her as the ringleader of a scheme that allegedly conned popular web producers out of rights to their content. The 22-year-old used her lofty status as an ESPN writer to convince youngsters with high follower counts on Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook to join a non-existent sports comedy venture. In exchange for a stake in that site, the producers turned over their comedic Facebook pages and parody Twitter feeds to Phillips and others. She was looking for rubes and the Internet was full of them.

As Deadspin and other websites have detailed, Phillips used these new sites to promote her own work. The sockpuppetry helped raise her Twitter follower count to over 60,000.

When two of the writers realized that the promise of riches from Phillips' venture was a pipe dream, they demanded she return their sites and passwords. According to emails, she responded with vague legal threats from lawyers who probably were as real as her sports comedy site.

[Ivan The Awesome]

Chick is hot.

[Herbert The Love Bug]

this is comedic

[Brokenbad]

I thought fore sure this was going to be about Hunter S Thompson covering the Mint 500 in Las Vegas.

[Kurb]

RIP Condescending Wonka :(

[SamTheRam]

The picture isn't her. It's of someone she went to school with.

[Mr. Scot]

Deadspin says this is the real Sarah Phillips (high school photo).

For those who haven't seen, here's the fake one.

[Donald LaFell]

damn that's cold blooded.