ESPN layoffs: Ryan Clark gone and more to come | (Updated: ) Tom Pelissero expected to be out at NFL Network

[TheRainMaker]

Cam Newton was let go as well. I always thought he sucked anyway

He was awful in the clips that I saw of him online. He also needs to clean up his look. It's distracting.

 

[Triumph]

Cam Newton was let go as well. I always thought he sucked anyway.

Steven A Smith is high on Scam Newton.

Its gotta be because of the women that Newton draws in.

 

[Triumph]

He was awful in the clips that I saw of him online. He also needs to clean up his look. It's distracting.

Seems like way too much work building a new outfit everyday.

Probably takes him hours to do his hair and figure out what shoes to wear.

 

[203Pat]

Cam Newton tried to replicate the Stephen A. Smith model of just firing off hot takes and yelling, but didn't seem to recognize he was on the show with the guy he was pretending to be. The ESPN model is that of Felger and Mazz (or sports radio as a whole). One guy needs to scream and rant, and the other guy needs to be the smug contrarian, and most importantly, there need to be clearly defined roles, of which the alpha is.

 

[sb1]

Bart Scott also out. Byeeee

Ex-Jets star, ESPN New York host Bart Scott out as part of layoffs

The former Jet is among those who were laid off by ESPN on Tuesday.

nypost.com

 

[sb1]

Full list of ESPN's 2026 summer layoffs

ESPN has laid off several on-air personalties over the last 24 hours including longstanding employees and star contributors.

awfulannouncing.com

 

[Bill Lee]

the Athletic is behind a paywall

Strange, it loaded for me w/o any login.

 

[Bill Lee]

What McAfee did. Built a show on Youtube that was watched more than anything on a network.

He proved he could draw eyeballs to a platform. ESPN recognized this and lured him with untold riches.

Although I'm not a fan of his macho-man schtick, I do admire how he bet on himself and made it work at a time when there were no real role models. Good on him. He found an audience.

Google suggests he's getting $60M a year from BSPN, with some sites reporting $85M. It makes me wonder, who was bidding against them?

Clark and countless other talking heads have never proved to be anything other than products of their platform. Easily replaced by a fraction of the cost.

Just look at Bayless and Kellerman without a platform propping them up.

True.

I was a fan of Lindsay Rhodes on NFLN, but once they dropped her for this year's model she pretty much disappeared.

 

[Bill Lee]

See also:

ESPN Fans Blaming Stephen A. Smith, Pat McAfee For Today's Layoffs

Layoffs are hitting ESPN this week. NFL analyst Ryan Clark and longtime MLB announcer Karl Ravech are among the big names being let go by the company. Clark had been with ESPN for about a decade, while Ravech had worked for ESPN for 33 years. More layoffs are expected to be made public as the...

sports.yahoo.com

 

[Bill Lee]

I don't watch Newton, he's beyond a clown.
10000% deserving.
Maybe he can renew his NFL career since he still thinks he's better than half the starting QBs in the NFL!

He wasn't better than 10% of the starting QBs in the year he was here.

 

[Bill Lee]

While I never want to see anyone lose their job, I really can't stand Ryan Clark. I think part of his little back and forth with Schrager stems from an inferiority complex. Not so much on ESPN, but on his podcast, Clark seems to try and pass himself off as some deep thinker and asks these longwinded questions to guests and then starts talking over half their answer.

While I don’t think much of Schrager either, the non-athletes usually seem to learn how to play the politics game, and at ESPN, that is the key to a long career. Stephen A. Smith, Scott Van Pelt, Mike Greenberg, John Buccigross, Tony Kornheiser, Mike Wilbon, etc. All of those guys have pretty high profiles, and none of them played a sport at a high level. They know how the game is played, and they stick around for decades.

Not just that, I think most ex-athletes aren't that great at explaining what's going on since they come at it from being excellent at their game so at some level they think most things going on are obvious. Also, a lot of them take the "too cool for school" vibe that I find really unhelpful.

FWIW it took Brady a season to become a decent announcer, and he's got all that content on the field to react to, rather than having to carry the whole story line by himself. On top of that all he has to do is fill in those precious nanoseconds before they jump to another ad read. It's not that demanding a gig, yet it took him a year to grow into it.

As for Eisen, I agree that ESPN figures they can get a cheaper play-by-play guy, and Eisen will still keep the other 15 roles he has there. He has actually been running a side project podcast called "This Was SportsCenter" where he talks with other anchors from the show's glory days. It seems pretty unanimous that even back then, ESPN was a difficult place to work, and management was constantly interfering with what they were trying to do on air. The one he did with Dan Patrick, they spend about half the episode taking not-so-thinly veiled shots at some of the ESPN higher-ups back then.

Overall I like him, although I gotta say his podcast doesn't stay in my regular rotation.

Good for him for keeping multiple gigs going, it's looking pretty darn smart right about now.

 

[203Pat]

Not just that, I think most ex-athletes aren't that great at explaining what's going on since they come at it from being excellent at their game so at some level they think most things going on are obvious. Also, a lot of them take the "too cool for school" vibe that I find really unhelpful.

FWIW it took Brady a season to become a decent announcer, and he's got all that content on the field to react to, rather than having to carry the whole story line by himself. On top of that all he has to do is fill in those precious nanoseconds before they jump to another ad read. It's not that demanding a gig, yet it took him a year to grow into it.



Overall I like him, although I gotta say his podcast doesn't stay in my regular rotation.

Good for him for keeping multiple gigs going, it's looking pretty darn smart right about now.

I agree on most ex-athletes not offering much analysis-wise. A lot of the time it seems to be generic observations with some personal anecdotes mixed in, and I believe that is why they basically get refreshed every 3-5 years. Once they get farther removed from their playing days and those anecdotes get stale, they don't really have much to fall back on, so they go into hot take mode because that is what management is pushing them towards, and they usually don't have the capability to go back and forth and defend any of their takes.

The new path for ex-athletes (and even current ones) is starting their own podcasts, but that market might already have reached a saturation point. Another issue with that is so many of them are just pretty bad at conducting a true interview, so it just ends up as a shoot the **** session, and a few good stories come out of those, but that isn't generally a sustainable model for the long term. There are also the egos and the business aspect, which are always an issue for athletes. Brandon Marshall's "I Am Athlete" podcast imploded because he got into a business dispute with the other hosts and the producer and generally started acting like a lunatic during too many episodes, getting into screaming matches. Now Ryan Clark and the other hosts split off to their own podcast that seems to be doing pretty well, but in my opinion, is limited by Clark's aforementioned poor interview skills.

 

[Thelonious]

The notion that ex-players make the best or even necessarily competent sports commentators is nonsense. The record is somewhat better with ex-coaches, but in the golden age of sports writing, the emphasis was on intelligence and on writing skills. For this and other reasons, I have not watched ESPN in a decade and am unlikely ever to do so again. It is The View for sports fans: no thanks.

 

[Delicate Genius]

One more shoe drops:

ESPN expected to lay off Karl Ravech after three decades on air: Sources

More expected cuts Tuesday at ESPN would most widely impact staff at NFL Network.

www.nytimes.com

Ravech is god awful and ruined baseball games with Eduardo Perez and David Ross.