Report: ESPN Parts Ways with Rob Parker

It’s been a whirlwind month for ESPN analyst Rob Parker, but as he starts the new year, so starts his new job search. After suspending Parker for his “cornball brother” remarks regarding Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III, ESPN has announced that they’ve let Rob Parker go — but they were very careful to say he wasn’t fired.

ESPN released this statement today regarding Parker’s exit from the network:

"Rob Parker’s contract expired at year end. Evaluating our needs and his work, including his recent RGIII comments, we decided not to renew."

Yesterday we posted a video of Parker going on a Detroit public access channel for an interview in which he blasted his then employers. Parker said flat out that ESPN and the producers of First Take knew full well that he was going to say what he said about Robert Griffin III and they let him go on anyways. ESPN didn’t directly cite the interview Parker did on Flashpoint, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect the dots.

Here’s the Zapruder footage of what likely was the last straw when it came to ESPN and their relationship with Parker.

Now that Parker is jobless, his journalism buddies are coming out of the wood work to wish him well and defend him as a good guy. This may be true, I don’t know Rob Parker and frankly my life will be no different if I ever meet him or not. But given the backlash ESPN received, this was likely the only move they could do.

ESPN hired the guy to be controversial, that’s what they do now. So it’s highly hypocritical that when he does something controversial, he’s fired. So don’t buy ESPN’s explanation that it was the RGIII comments that got Parker fired, it was the flaming of ESPN that got Rob Parker canned — or so it would seem. Either way, this saga is over and done with and hopefully, ESPN will be more responsible in the future when it comes to what they choose to put on their 8 million different networks.