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ESPN became the focus of the sports world on Tuesday as the company was hit with yet another round of layoffs affecting several well-known personalities. ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro issued a company-wide memo at 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday morning citing “difficult decisions” following the company’s NFL equity deal that involved the acquisition of NFL Network.

It started on Monday night, when Ryan Clark was informed of his exit during an episode of NFL Live that he was on. And it continued Tuesday morning with several other names.

Karl Ravech departs ESPN after 33 years with the company as a host and play-by-play anchor the night after calling an MLB game for the network.

Longtime SportsCenter veteran David Lloyd, injury expert Stephania Bell, and NFL Network reporter Tom Pelissero were the next reported to go.

NFL analysts Charles Davis and Cam Newton were released from their NFL Network and ESPN duties, respectively. Other names include ESPN New York host Bart Scott, combat sports writer Andreas Hale, and staff writer Dan Hajducky.

Read more of today’s top stories at Awful Announcing.

The summer of 2026 was not the first round of layoffs to hit ESPN. But they may have been among the most impactful.

This year brought the departures of several network stars and longtime contributors. Ryan Clark was at one point pegged to be the network’s lead NFL analyst before a series of controversies and apologies set him off track. Cam Newton looked like he was going to be a future star, but was likewise affected by too much drama and distractions.

Longtime employees like Karl Ravech, David Lloyd, and Stephania Bell were let go with decades of service between them. And NFL Network and the company’s online presence were affected as well.

In years past, ESPN has had years when it has gone through layoffs. 2017 saw Danny Kanell, Trent Dilfer, Ed Werder, and Len Elmore among the on-air talent laid off. The network has laid off hundreds of other staffers in past years, including in 2020 after the COVID pandemic. 2023 was particularly shocking, with Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson dismissed after years of calling the NBA Finals together with Mike Breen. Big names like Max Kellerman, Suzy Kolber, Todd McShay, and Keyshawn Johnson were let go that year too. In 2024, it was Robert Griffin III, Sam Ponder, and Zach Lowe in a surprising wave.

But the most striking element of this year’s layoffs comes in what happened with Clark and Ravech around their last ESPN assignments and the cold, harsh realities of today’s media landscape rising to the forefront.

Ryan Clark was informed while on the air during an episode of NFL Live on Monday that he was being let go. He literally disappeared from ESPN airwaves in a flash, likely never to be seen again. A situation like this should have been avoided at all costs. But because ESPN was pressed into action by reporting from Outkick and didn’t want Clark to find out from a news article, they decided to act fast and drop the news at what might have been the worst possible time.

Say what you will about how much Clark owns in the decision for ESPN to part ways with him given his number of controversial moments in the last year, but to have the news be reported while he was live on air is an unfair way to go out, as was noted by others in the media.

While Karl Ravech wasn’t let go live on the air, he was informed of his being let go by The Athletic in a phone call on Tuesday morning before he was notified by ESPN. This came the night after he called a nationally televised Major League Baseball game on ESPN between the Phillies and Dodgers.

That is a particularly sad subplot to these layoffs. Ravech has been a stalwart on ESPN for over 30 years. For many baseball fans in particular, he was the last link to the days of daily episodes of Baseball Tonight. For someone who has given that depth of service to ESPN to find out that he’s being let go in a phone call by a media outlet is truly a sad development.

Surely ESPN has to learn a better way to manage these layoffs and the fallout that follows, especially if it is going to become a regular part of their operations. How did Clark’s departure leak before others on Tuesday morning? Why was ESPN caught in a race with media outlets to inform longtime employees of their exits? It’s almost impossible to handle something like layoffs perfectly, but what has transpired this week has been especially jarring and unusually messy in those two instances.

What’s next for ESPN? In all likelihood, the network will not miss a beat. ESPN has made the decision that its stars are the priority. And no matter how many salaries the Pat McAfees and Stephen A. Smiths of the world can support, they have deemed a select few as indispensable while almost everyone else is dispensable. This is another unflinching truth of the modern media world. Unless you can single-handedly drive eyeballs and clicks as a personality, it’s an uphill climb for everyone.

The reality is that there are plenty of on-air personnel ready to step into the roles vacated by those departing. Like any sports team, there is a “next person up” mentality in Bristol. The network has plenty of NFL analysts to fill the void of Clark and Newton, like the newly re-signed Jason McCourty. New SportsCenter anchors like Madelyn Burke have been hired in recent months. Jon Sciambi, Mike Monaco, and Kevin Brown are already contributors to ESPN’s baseball play-by-play coverage.

But it’s the way these layoffs happen and the message they send that stings the most. If ESPN isn’t safe from regular layoffs as the Worldwide Leader in Sports, then who is?

We live in a time when The Washington Post nuked its entire sports section. Layoffs have hit the radio and print industries incredibly hard. The RSN ecosystem is vanishing before our eyes. Legacy outlets and publications are hanging on by a thread. Even "new” media outlets that were once powerhouses like Deadspin and SB Nation have been completely transformed.

These summer layoffs now seem to be a regular part of doing business for ESPN. And the unflinching way in which they transpired this year has caused that reality to fully sink in. And that isn’t just reverberating throughout Bristol, it’s doing so throughout the entire media industry.

⚽ World Cup viewership is in for Sunday’s final, and the numbers are truly astounding. Fox Sports recorded 38.9 million viewers for Spain’s victory over Argentina, even surpassing the USA-Belgium game as the most-watched soccer telecast in history. It’s the most watched non-NFL broadcast of any kind on any network since 2016. Combined with Telemundo’s audience of 23.9 million, the Final was watched by a total of 62.8 million people.

🏒 The NHL will start local broadcast operations in-house with four teams for next season, including the defending Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes.

🏀 Rich Paul slammed the door shut on anyone having the inside track to reporting LeBron James’ destination because not even he knows at the moment.

🏈 Noah Eagle will reportedly call Netflix’s broadcast of the NFL’s first-ever game in Australia.

🏈 Paul Finebaum broke the fourth wall by citing ESPN’s investment in College Football Playoff expansion talks while on ESPN.

“This time, we're getting blamed as well. Which I guess I can understand, but I mean, there's billions and billions of dollars in these companies, and hard decisions have to get made. And we don't like any of them, and we hope we're an asset to the company going forward." - Pat McAfee sees all the noise about his massive salary anytime ESPN goes through layoffs.

“The bosses know I’m not happy about this decision; I’ve made that very, very clear. But it’s also important that myself and anybody else in the world of business be grown-ups and understand that these are the kinds of things that happen when layoffs happen.” - Stephen A. Smith was not happy about ESPN letting Ryan Clark walk out the door, but also understands it’s part of doing business.

“There needs to be better informational security when it comes to layoffs to where the information does not leak so much so that you feel like your best option is to let someone know they’re being let go while they’re on the air in a commercial break.” - Nick Wright wishes ESPN would have handled its layoffs in a way that wasn’t so messy.

Whether you like it or not, First Take has become ESPN’s flagship daily program in terms of eyeballs, buzz, and dollars committed. The network paid Stephen A. Smith $100 million over five years in 2025, in large part because of the empire he has built on weekday mornings: not just drawing a consistent audience, but generating the kind of reactions that few others can.

But aside from Smith and his ample compensation package and power as an executive producer of the program, things have not been a smooth ride for First Take in recent years.

It started when Max Kellerman was involved in another round of ESPN layoffs in the summer of 2023. While Smith lost his debate partner for the program, he gained what amounted to near-total control over the show. Instead of having to share the stage with an adversary, Smith would become the sun of the First Take universe with everyone brought in to revolve around him.

But in recent years, the biggest stars on First Take have found themselves leaving the show in inauspicious circumstances. ESPN parted ways with Shannon Sharpe after sexual assault allegations in a shockingly public saga. Longtime host Molly Qerim abruptly left the program after a decade with Smith, then opining about her situation in a bizarre monologue that raised more questions than answers. And now two of the show’s top contributors, Ryan Clark and Cam Newton, are also gone before the 2026 football season.

While Smith expressed his displeasure over Clark’s departure specifically, he was also willing to say he understood that ESPN and Disney have certain financial obligations to meet.

From a macro viewpoint, you could be forgiven for thinking that there was a shift in the balance of power at ESPN between their two biggest and most highly compensated stars in Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith. As far as the network's nexus goes, it appears McAfee certainly has the current advantage.

While McAfee is getting altcasts, College GameDay, WWE, and whatever other opportunities he pleases, Smith is seeing some of his handpicked colleagues leave the network against his wishes. A touted role on Monday Night Countdown featured just a few appearances. And with Inside the NBA, Smith’s presence on top NBA games was no longer needed.

It gets even deeper at the executive level. Longtime ESPN executive David Roberts is retiring at the end of August. In his longtime role as ESPN’s executive vice president and executive editor of sports news and entertainment, he was influential in bringing Stephen A. Smith back to the company in 2011. Stepping into his place is Mike Foss, who in his role as VP of sport studio and entertainment has been the closest ESPN executive to Pat McAfee during his tenure with the network.

A McAfee ally replacing a Smith ally in a key executive role does not mean that there is some kind of internal civil war happening where one side is about ready to oust the other completely from the company. McAfee’s show is licensed after all, so his show and First Take are entirely different enterprises. And as long as Smith can still count Jimmy Pitaro and the very top of the company among his supporters, he isn’t going anywhere, especially as he continues to enjoy the freedom to basically do whatever he wants outside of First Take. Even though he has voiced his personal disagreement with business decisions on multiple occasions, ultimately Smith continues to toe the company line.

But as far as the overall direction of the network moving forward after this period of layoffs, these developments are certainly worth keeping in mind as ESPN charts its future course. If ESPN really does pony up a contract for McAfee that could triple Smith’s salary at $60 million per year to keep him on board, then we will truly know who and what the network’s priorities will be moving forward.