Is Chris Berman a Sympathetic Figure Now?

On Thursday night, my boss Jason McIntyre reported that Chris Berman would be retiring from ESPN, and that this year would be his last hosting the NFL Draft, and the network’s two NFL Countdown programs.

Pretty soon thereafter, Richard Sandomir passed along the following quote from Berman’s agent, Lou Oppenheim: “Chris is NOT retiring. Loves what he’s doing too much and is too young to hang ’em up … Perhaps people with an agenda put it out there.”

Sandomir didn’t bother to name Oppenheim, or to contextualize that Berman will no longer occupy his three biggest roles at ESPN. Richard Deitsch confirmed that Berman will be “stepping aside” from those gigs, but added that the broadcaster might take on an emeritus role a la Mike Ditka in the next year or two. (Or maybe he’ll go somewhere like NFL Network, or, as Mike Florio theorized, a web outlet with league broadcasting rights like Yahoo or Twitter? The point is he won’t disappear.)

What the statement from Oppenheim did appear to imply, though, is that Berman, 61, is getting pushed out as opposed to leaving on his own volition. On one hand, he’s an OG ESPN’er whose personality has had an indelible impact on the organization. To many, his presence is the embodiment of Football. If you can’t think positively of his years with Tom Jackson on NFL Primetime you’re just a hater. On the other, his act wore thin on younger audiences in recent years (though, I’ve still enjoyed his work), and he didn’t ever really use his platform to challenge the NFL on its seedy underbelly.

It’s been well documented that ESPN is undergoing what could be characterized both as a rebuild and a makeover, and even with someone with the name magnitude of Berman this move couldn’t be seen as a total surprise. ESPN has excised Bill Simmons and not renewed Keith Olbermann, and been outbid on people it did want to keep like Colin Cowherd, Skip Bayless, and Mike Tirico.

(Ex-jocks have not even been spared in the bloodletting, though replacing Cris Carter, Ray Lewis, and Keyshawn Johnson with Matt Hasselbeck, Charles Woodson, and Randy Moss cannot be seen as anything other than the potential for dramatic improvement.)

ESPN is getting younger, cheaper, less white, and less male. Berman hits for the cycle in the opposite of those categories. He won’t be the final domino.