On Monday, ESPN broadcast the second half of the NFL’s week one Monday night doubleheader, an AFC West rivalry matchup between the Denver Broncos and San Diego Los Angeles Chargers from Denver. While the Broncos’ last-second thwarting of the Chargers’ fourth-quarter comeback was exciting, the game will be most remembered as a landmark in diversity.
In the broadcast booth at Sports Authority Field at Mile High was Beth Mowins, a veteran college football broadcaster who became the first woman to announce a Monday Night Football game. On the sidelines, it was also the Monday Night Football debut of Sergio Dipp, a Mexican-American reporter who spent the last four years of his career broadcasting in Spanish for ESPN Deportes. But unfortunately for Dipp, his debut was memorable for all the wrong reasons.
In his sideline report, Dipp attempted to make note of another landmark in diversity, the debuts of two black head coaches, Vance Joseph of the Broncos and the Chargers’ Anthony Lynn. But when Mowins threw it to Dipp, he fumbled his lines and delivered them in an odd cadence. “Here on the field, from up close, just watching … coach Vance Joseph … from here. You watch him now on the screen,” he said. His quick report ended with him attempting to scream over the crowd in Denver. “And here he is, having the time of his life this night making his head-coaching debut!” he shouted.
The report quickly drew jeers from across the Internet:
No more Sergio Dipp tonight. The NFL put him in the concussion protocol.
— Not Bill Walton (@NotBillWalton) September 12, 2017
Sergio Dipp: How do you guys think my first update went???
— KFC (@KFCBarstool) September 12, 2017
Entire world: pic.twitter.com/QFJHl72013
Sergio Dipp is basically me at a bar when I try speaking to women
— Luke Bellus (@lukebellus4) September 12, 2017
After the game, Dipp made a heartfelt apology for his bizarre report from his hotel room. Sitting on his hotel room bed, he explained that his attempt was to demonstrate the parallels between his debut as a minority and that of the head coaches. “All I wanted to do was to show some love to these two historical head coaches,” Dipp said. “Hopefully, I’ll have another chance and be sure I’ll make the most out of it.”
Thank you...
— Sergio Dipp (@SergioADippW) September 12, 2017
And God bless America. pic.twitter.com/mYXwBNFB6g
Here’s some of Dipp’s work on ESPN Deportes that proves he deserves a second shot.
¿Ya conoces a @SergioADippW ?
— ESPN Deportes (US) (@ESPNDeportes) September 8, 2017
Con el arranque de la NFL Sergio está listo para traerte lo mejor de los emparrillados.
Síguelo ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/0V7xF8j8Cs
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.