Ryan Clark was not only the most prominent name ousted at ESPN this week, but the circumstances around his departure continue to generate the most controversy for the network.
The latest comments from Clark himself, who on the latest episode of his podcast The Pivot gave his own version of the story. Clark not only emphasized that he was “fired” and not “laid off,” but accused ESPN of intentionally leaking the news to Fox News-owned OutKick to make him look bad and score a PR win for themselves.
“I wasn’t laid off. I was fired. They’re using layoffs as a cover and a camouflage for what they already intended on doing,” Clark said. “But there was no cause for it. So because there was no cause for it, you couldn’t just fire me. So you had to wait for the layoff so you could camouflage it and veil it.”
Recalling the hours leading up to his exit on Monday, Clark alleged that news of his departure actually originated last Friday. Though he did not explain further, Clark confirmed that he heard the news while appearing on Monday’s NFL Live and appeared to believe ESPN was playing a long game to get rid of him.
Clark traced ESPN’s seeming collaboration with OutKick back to last fall, when the outlet closely covered his apology for giving inaccurate information about a car crash involving LSU’s Kyren Lacy, who later took his own life. At the time, Clark said he took note of the way OutKick praised Scott Van Pelt and Pat McAfee for their apology while smearing him over his comments.
Clark also revealed that he nearly stepped away from the network over a disagreement with ESPN about how to handle the situation.
“During the season, after some of the Kyren Lacy news broke, there were people on our network, including me, who said something about it. Both of those people apologized, as did I,” he explained.
“I didn’t want to. I was told I couldn’t come to work if I didn’t, and at that point, I said, ‘Well, I can’t come to work tomorrow, because I don’t believe that I did anything wrong.’ Some conversations happened, and we got to that point. And OutKick wrote an article about the people that apologized, two very prominent faces at ESPN. And they praised them for who they were and how they brought this thing back around. And they bashed me, talked about how negative I was, and spoke about me in such a nasty way.”
After the Lacy saga, Clark said he sent an e-mail to top ESPN executives Burke Magnus and David Roberts, warning them to watch out for OutKick and its coverage of him.
Those memories came crashing down on Clark this week when OutKick got a tip about his dismissal, tipping over the first domino that led to Clark leaving NFL Live mid-show upon finding out about his firing.
Clark believes that someone at ESPN was cooperating with OutKick, an outlet “they knew hated me,” he said, to spin the story positively. Clark argued that by having OutKick report the news first, ESPN would get “positive publicity” out of the layoffs before the rest of the bad news hit on Tuesday.
Given Clark’s hints toward a deeper story, there may be info missing. But at face value, it would seem strange for ESPN management to collectively feed OutKick any story. The Clay Travis-founded outlet built a brand out of bashing the Worldwide Leader. At OutKick, even a story celebrating Clark’s ouster would be unlikely to uplift ESPN in any way.
