The latest episode of the culture wars to wash into sports, and the news media that covers it, was prompted (unintentionally) by a broadcaster named Robert Lee. His employer, ESPN, announced Tuesday night that the name he shares with the Confederate general made him a poor choice for calling a University of Virginia football game in Charlottesville, where a recent protest over the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee left a woman dead and became part of the national dialogue.

It was a story tailor-made for America’s present hyperpolarized, kinetic and more than slightly absurd moment, and it has left one inescapable conclusion: However many times sports media outlets — and chiefly the biggest of them all, ESPN — are implored to “stick to sports,” the centripetal force of politics is bound to make a battlefield of almost anything.

ESPN made the decision with Lee, the company said in a statement, “as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, simply because of the coincidence of his name.”

“In that moment it felt right to all parties,” the statement said.

ESPN president John Skipper said Lee was offered the chance to broadcast a different game on the same day and opted for that.

ESPN did not make Lee available for comment.

— The New York Times