Breaking: ESPN Lays Off a Bunch of People, Some of Whom You Might Like

Earlier today (it’s still before midnight DFO time!) ESPN laid off a whole bunch of people from their on-air staff including SportsCenter anchors, people on Baseball Tonight, a whole bunch of college reporters, and basically their whole hockey staff not named Barry Melrose. Others, like Karl Ravech, Ryen Russilo, and Hannah Storm, will have a significantly reduced role. Stephen A. Smith was neither let go nor was he put in a room with a frequency specifically designed to cancel and/or throw out his voice, and Darren Rovell was spared the axe presumably for #branding reasons.

When asked to give a couple words about the layoffs, Jon Gruden pointed to himself and said “THIS GUY RIGHT HERE, I CALL HIM THE RUSSIAN BECAUSE HE’S ANNEXING DILFER’S DESK.”

You can read the memo the president of ESPN wrote here, or you can read the Cliff’s Notes version here.