After 12 years at the network, Ryan Clark was recently laid off by ESPN. Only, Clark says he wasn’t laid off; rather, he believes he was fired instead.
Now, he’s opening up about why he believes ESPN let him go, despite appearing to be a key figure as an NFL analyst who made frequent appearances on “NFL Live,” “First Take,” “Get Up!,” “SportsCenter,” and more.
Ryan Clark Reveals Why He Thinks He Was Fired
It’s been almost a week since ESPN split from Clark and several other high-profile employees. Now that he’s had some time to unwind, Clark turned to “The Pivot Podcast” to dispel some rumors and bring clarity to a tough situation for everyone involved.
“I wasn’t laid off, I was fired,” Clark said. “They’re using layoffs as a cover and a camouflage for what they already intended on doing. 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 till the layoffs so you could camouflage it and veil it. But here’s the other thing, if I was laid off like everybody else, it came out on Tuesday; mine came out on Friday.”
Clark then revealed he got a text telling him to call his boss. Once he reached his superior, his boss let him know what was going on. Yet, that reasoning started off with a joke.
“Our friends at Outkick had the story, and we’re going to leak it,” Clark’s boss told him, jokingly.
“Let me tell you why I know I was fired,” Clark said. “Because, during the season, after some of the Kyren Lacy news broke, there were people on our network, along with me, that said something about it. Both of those people apologized. As did I. 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 I did anything wrong.’ Some conversations happened, and we got to that point.”
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For the record, Clark was critical of those who were quick to convict Lacy before all the details were released. But he later apologized for his comments, as did Pat McAfee, who’s still employed by ESPN through its layoffs.
Then, Clark circled back to how Outkick ties into all of this.
“Outkick wrote an article about all the people that apologized,” Clark said. “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, spoke about me in such a nasty way.”
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Naturally, Clark wasn’t pleased with how he felt he was being treated differently from his peers, and he believes he knows the reason why.
“I sent an email at that time to Burke Magnus and Dave Roberts,” Clark said. “Cuz we were on an email about how we were going to handle it, and I was very pointed in saying, ‘You have to watch who you listen to about me. There’s certain people who want to paint me as a certain thing. Certain people who want to devalue my voice. Certain people who, no matter what I do, with all the great I’ve done, they’d never mention that.'”
Clark continued, “But in this case, there are three people who are very important to this network who all did the same thing. Who all responded in the same way. Only one of us was vilified, and only one of us was a black man.”
Clark believes that the connection to Outkick was no mistake.
“So how poignant and purposeful is it to make sure that’s the exact same publication that gets the story that I’m going to be fired,” Clark added. “Because you know what they’re gonna do? They’re gonna praise ESPN. They’re gonna pump ESPN up for getting rid of the person who stands up for the community, and they’re gonna say that these are all the reasons that I didn’t belong on TV in the first place.
“So let’s garner as much positive publicity as we can early, before all these people that you’ve seen come out on my behalf and say I was the best in the world at the job and that I deserve better.”
“One, I didn’t deserve to be laid off or fired, it ain’t about money,” Clark added. “Two, I didn’t deserve to be handled that way. And they were going to get ahead of it by leaking it to someone who they know hated me.”
Clearly, Clark feels like he shouldn’t have been let go. To the point where he feels ESPN didn’t have a legitimate reason for letting him go, and used network layoffs to mask its decision. This sounds like someone who is motivated to show them what they’re now missing out on, and he could land some unique opportunities because of it.
