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Ryan Clark is trying to set the record straight on his ouster from ESPN earlier this week.
As has been reported extensively since news of his firing surfaced Monday evening, Clark was informed he was being laid off during the taping of Monday’s episode of NFL Live. Based on multiple reports about the timeline, Awful Announcing wrote that news of Clark’s firing was obtained by the Fox News-owned sports site OutKick, which folded him into a broader wave of cuts hitting ESPN and NFL Network later in the week. ESPN had planned to notify Clark privately on Tuesday. When OutKick reporter Bobby Burack reached out to ESPN to ask for comment before publishing his report Monday evening, ESPN scrambled to inform Clark of his ouster mid-show rather than let him learn it from someone else’s byline. Subsequent reports suggested ESPN had received multiple inquiries from media outlets about the news. The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported the news at a similar time to OutKick.
Following the initial wave of reports about Clark’s firing on Monday, many outlets characterized ESPN’s removal of Clark from the NFL Live taping as a mutual decision.
It appears as if Clark is now disputing that characterization. In a social media post on Wednesday, Clark says he was, in his estimation, forced off NFL Live.
“I wasn’t forced?” Clark wrote, questioning a headline from TMZ Sports. “‘I ask, should I be done now?’ The answer was ‘yes.'”
According to Clark, he asked ESPN whether he should leave the show effective immediately, and ESPN responded in the affirmative. If that’s the case, that would not align with the reported framing of how the situation was handled. Rather, that would be ESPN clearly advising him to get off the air.
Clark’s characterization of events changes how this part of his firing should be perceived. If Clark had been allowed to continue on with Monday’s episode, he might’ve chosen to do so. That would’ve given him the opportunity to announce his departure on his own terms and say a farewell. Perhaps from ESPN’s perspective, that would’ve also run the risk of Clark telling his unfiltered side of the story, which the network would’ve wanted to avoid.
The situation was unprecedented. No one in television gets fired while they’re on the air. If Clark had been allowed to continue, anything from a sincere goodbye to a scorched-earth anti-ESPN rant would’ve been on the table.
So, despite what multiple reports earlier this week suggested about a mutual decision, it makes sense that ESPN wouldn’t leave Clark with a choice.
The inhumanity of it all is hard to comprehend. Whether you loved him or hated him, no one deserves to be informed about losing a job like that. And Clark is well within his right to correct the record on exactly how it went down.
The post Ryan Clark disputes how he was pulled off air on final day at ESPN appeared first on Awful Announcing.
