ESPN's Dianna Russini photographed for (201) Magazine at Northern Valley Regional High School in Old Tappan, NJ on Aug. 24, 2020.
Dianna Russini has a few options for her sports media comeback
Dianna Russini is planning a sports media comeback, and the most likely landing place is hardly a surprise. According to reports, Barstool Sports is currently the favorite to hire Russini whenever she resurfaces following her resignation from The Athletic in April.
According to Front Office Sports, former ESPN and The Athletic NFL insider Dianna Russini is “absolutely” planning a return to the media space following her April resignation from The Athletic amid the Mike Vrabel photos scandal. In April, photos published by Page Six showed Russini and Vrabel holding hands and hugging at Ambiente Sedona, a luxury adults-only resort in Arizona. Additional photos of the pair canoodling at a New York City bar in March 2020 and boarding a private Tennessee boat trip in 2021 subsequently surfaced.
While Russini and Vrabel initially both attempted to downplay the scandal, the release of additional photos taken over many years made that position untenable. Vrabel then announced he would be seeking “counseling,” which he attended on the third and final day of the 2026 NFL Draft. Russini resigned from The Athletic in mid-April and has not made any public comments or appearances since.
Barstool Sports is the leading candidate to hire former ESPN and The Athletic reporter Dianna Russini when she makes her return to sports media
Russini has reportedly held multiple discussions about multiple opportunities ranging from NFL insider roles to on-air personality positions.
The leading candidate to hire her, per FOS reporter Michael McCarthy’s sources, is Barstool Sports. Russini is friends with Barstool’s two biggest on-air talents — Pardon My Take hosts Dan “Big Cat” Katz and PFT Commenter — and has appeared frequently on their podcast, while founder and boss Dave Portnoy has already publicly declared it a “no-brainer” to hire her.
Portnoy also told Us Weekly that having an alleged extramarital affair “is not like a capital offense that should end somebody’s professional career.” In general, the threshold for getting “canceled” is far higher than at traditional media outlets, meaning hiring Russini would not only be welcomed, but is generally expected.
Fox Sports Radio host Jon “Stugotz” Weiner has also floated the idea of hiring Russini, while Dan LeBatard’s Meadowlark Media is also seen as a potential landing spot for her.
The Athletic‘s internal investigation found that Russini’s undisclosed relationship with Vrabel was “in clear violation” of the outlet’s standards, but also found “scant evidence” the relationship impacted her reporting.
“While the full nature of the Russini-Vrabel relationship is still unknown, the vast majority of Russini’s work for The Athletic had nothing to do with Vrabel, the report said. Of the 903 pieces, around 5 percent were in some way about Vrabel or his teams. Of the around 46 pieces that mentioned Vrabel or his teams, nearly a third were transactional moves about trades or hires. None of them were scoops, meaning The Athletic did not report the stories exclusively.”
The report, published this week, revealed that investigators reviewed 903 stories, 77 videos, 204 podcast episodes, and 25 off-platform appearances, and found that most of what she wrote about Vrabel was “transactional and newsy.”
“The review found that the vast majority of Dianna’s stories were unrelated to Vrabel, and most of these that did mention him did not raise concerns. We have, however, added four editor’s notes to four stories—one written and three videos—that did not meet our standards,” wrote The Athletic’s executive editor Steve Ginsberg.