News traveled quickly on Saturday night, that controversial writer and host Jemele Hill had reached an agreement on a contract buyout with ESPN. However, the details of that buyout were not known at the time.
Now, reported details of that buyout are beginning to emerge and it appears that ESPN was willing to pay an awful lot of money to end their relationship with Hill.
According to Real Clear Life:
Following a conversation she requested with network president Jimmy Pitaro, ESPN and Hill reached an “amicable” split and she will be bought out of her $2.5 million contract.
The contract reportedly has at least two years remaining on it so Hill will likely walk away with a package in the seven figures as a result of the agreement.
Pitaro reportedly made it clear to Hill that ESPN wants to keep its focus on sports and, since she is unwilling to keep her politics private, the split makes sense on both sides.
At least one report puts the estimated value of Hill’s total contract buyout at $6 million:
The fact that ESPN was willing to buy Hill out with “at least” two years remaining on her contract, shows just how desperate the network was to move on from Hill. The former SC6 host struggled — to put it mildly — when it came to separating political advocacy from her work as a sports analyst.
Hill famously called President Trump a “white supremacist” on Twitter in September of last year. A comment which she not only refused to apologize for, but actually doubled-down on in several subsequent interviews.
In one such interview, the former SportsCenter host told Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch that she had no regrets over calling the president a racist.
“I don’t regret what I said or even the language that I used.”
Though Hill was never disciplined by ESPN for her comments about the president, she did find herself suspended after an incident involving Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones. After Jones said that any Cowboys player who protested the anthem would not play, Hill began using her Twitter account to advise fans on how to boycott the Dallas Cowboys.
That suspension arguably served as the beginning of the end for Hill at ESPN. The show she co-anchored, SC6, never fulfilled the ratings expectations that ESPN had for it. In early 2018, Hill asked to be removed from the show and to instead focus her efforts on writing for the Undefeated.
Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter @themightygwinn