Name / what they covered / when they left

Peter Gammons (MLB, Dec 2009)
Mary Carillo (Tennis announcing, Jan. 2011)
Rob Neyer (MLB, Jan. 2011)
Josh Elliott (Sportscenter, April 2011)
Michele Tafoya (Sideline reporter, April 2011)
Brian Kenny (Sportscenter, August 2011)
Bruce Feldman (College football, Sept. 2011)
Pat Forde (College football, college basketball Oct. 2011)

I’ll open with this: ESPN is an enormous entity with over 1,000 writers, announcers, radio hosts, TV personalities and various public-facing commenters scattered around the country. That being said, if you went back 10 years, or even five, the mere thought of anyone leaving a destination job like ESPN – top of the sports mountain! – was unheard of. Sure, you had scattered, big departures – Jason Whitlock, Dan Patrick, Keith Olbermann – but nothing like the exodus in the last 21 months.

Let’s explore.

- Each of the names above has their own unique story of why they left. I’m sure some folks at ESPN will nit-pick it to death. They’ll challenge whether or not Neyer/Feldman were “big names” (both were popular online) or whether Elliott should even be on this list (he’s still in the family at ABC’s Good Morning America).
- This list could be expanded, depending on your definition of “big-name.” Does Jason Sobel qualify? What about Jason Smith? What about Erik Kuselias? What about Matt Mosley? And to be fair, ESPN has retained some top talent, too: Chris Berman, Bill Simmons and Erin Andrews were all re-signed in the last 21 months.
- The sports landscape has gotten increasingly competitive in the last 10 years. The emergence of the Golf Channel, the NFL Network (Rich Eisen went there in 2003) and the MLB Network, along with the proliferation of sports websites, has cut into ESPN’s sporting dominance.
- Is ESPN still the sports destination? Depends on which former/current ESPN employees you talk to. Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman left, saw that the grass wasn’t greener, and then returned.
- Something you can do now that you couldn’t do 5-10 years ago: leverage a re-up at ESPN with an offer from Versus or Comcast Yahoo (doh!) which are two emerging, viable options.
- Will we see Scott Van Pelt branch out the way Dan Patrick has?
- Nobody’s saying ESPN is going to be hemorrhaging viewers/readers due to any of these departures. It’s simply a list – pehraps surprising to some – of “big” names who have left ESPN in the last 21 months.

ESPN Disbands Content Development Group [B & C]

* Obviously, big is subjective. Relax.