Bobby Burack: ESPN Played Dirty in Ryan Clark’s Mid-Show Firing

**Craig Carton** (0:00)
Big Mac off today, back tomorrow. Zach Gelb, nice enough to swing on by and hang out for a couple hours today, so good job thus far.
You got Bobby on the line there, boys? Yes, all good to go.
So Bobby Burack from Outkick, who's been making a big name for himself. I'm a big fan of his, although I've never met him. I read his stuff on the daily. He does a great job working over there under the Fox News umbrella, which is Outkick. And man oh man, he was on it with his Ryan Clark ESPN story. And then other people try to steal the story from him. And I hate when that happens. But I want to get down to exactly what took place. So I have to have Bobby joining us this afternoon. Bobby, it's Craig and Zach's with me today. How you doing, pal? Good to talk to you.

**Bobby Burack** (0:45)
Hey, everything's great. I appreciate you having me.

**Craig Carton** (0:48)
Yeah. All right. So I was reading along and I find it entertaining. It's like great theater to me.
As I understand it, based on what you posted, that you had the story from multiple sources that Ryan Clark was going to be probably the biggest of all the names in this particular jettisoning of a town at ESPN. And walk me through that part of it, how you guys had the story and then what happened when you reached out to ESPN before you reported it.

**Bobby Burack** (1:18)
Yeah, so, excuse me, it actually goes back to Friday.
Someone contacted me Friday saying, what are you hearing about ESPN's plans for the Super Bowl, which for those that don't know, they're going to broadcast their first ever Super Bowl this year. And I said, oh, what do you mean? Well, one of the big stories is their half time show is not very good and it's featured Ryan Clark the past, I don't know, four or five years. And this person told me that Clark is going to be let go this week, so there's going to be an open spot for Super Bowl half time. I started poking around in a little delicate situation with the layoff and people weren't saying much, but I had it pretty confirmed at around noon and verified by one o'clock yesterday that Ryan Clark was the biggest name on the layoff list. And I do believe they had a literal list of the people they were going to lay off. So we go to the process and I inform the people to work with that I'm going to run this story, the policy to reach out to ESPN PR and let them know we're running this.

**Craig Carton** (2:24)
Okay, so stop there. So by one o'clock yesterday, you have it locked down, whomever your sources are, you feel comfortable enough that you go to your bosses and say, look, just to give you a heads up, I've got this on lockdown, I'm going to report under the Outkick umbrella that Ryan Clark is out at ESPN and they say to you, do what first?

**Bobby Burack** (2:47)
We contacted them around four, so wasn't right. You got to give your sources some time, right? To not make it too obvious. So we let them know at four o'clock, they want us to hold till 545 We said no, five o'clock is good.

**Craig Carton** (3:00)
And when you say then, you mean ESPN. You guys reach out to ESPN PR and say, we're running this story. We want to give you a heads up because that's the right thing to do.
They ask you to pause, to embargo the story for almost two hours.

**Bobby Burack** (3:16)
Yes. And we said no, one hour is good. So we're waiting and waiting. And by the way, it was so bizarre while we're waiting, Ryan Clark is on TV. He's on NFL live while we're waiting. Give him a taste. The report is going to be out. Well, then eventually ESPN says, all right, fine, whatever. We're good.
So we post the story and then we find out one minute before that the athletic had the same story. But here's the real kicker, Craig. Go ahead. The athletic story only had a few lines in it. It was clearly rushed. See, it'd be different if the athletic had pre-wrote it and was waiting all day for their go ahead. No, no, no. They rushed it out with just a few lines. So put two and two together.
While we're waiting for the go ahead, just to make sure everything's good, Ryan Clark knows ESPN in the meantime, yanks Ryan Clark off set. They tell him he's terminated and they tip off the athletic all because they don't want us to have the story.