In a move that has seemed inevitable since September, the Jemele Hill era on SportsCenter is ending.
Sports Illustrated and other outlets reported Friday that Hill will leave the 6 PM ET edition of SportsCenter effective February 2, moving to a new role on ESPN’s website The Undefeated. The move comes just over three months after she was suspended from ESPN for suggesting a boycott of the Dallas Cowboys’ sponsors, and four months after she became the subject of a political firestorm for criticizing the U.S. president.
According to SI, The Hollywood Reporter, and Variety, the decision was made at the behest of Hill. She reportedly approached ESPN executives about making the change late last year.
Hill and longtime TV partner Michael Smith became hosts of the 6 PM SportsCenter — retitled “SC6” — last year, after three years co-hosting the ESPN2 talk show His & Hers (previously known as Numbers Never Lie).
Smith will remain on the 6 PM show, hosting solo for the time being. He and Hill will resume their His & Hers podcast, which ended last year, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Moving Hill and Smith to SportsCenter will ultimately be remembered as one of the poorest decisions of the John Skipper era. It killed a successful show in His & Hers, exposed Hill to scrutiny that no sports media professional has ever before experienced, and cost ESPN one of its brightest stars in Lindsay Czarniak — who after getting bumped from the 6 PM SportsCenter never found another permanent role on ESPN. She left the company last year.
Beyond anything else, the show simply did not work. It was never quite His & Hers, too buttoned up to maintain the laid-back and mostly lighthearted tone of that show. It was never quite SportsCenter, featuring deviations from that show’s format that were likely too much for long-time viewers — from a debate format to sitcom-intro parodies.
As for Hill, the past year has been a microcosm of her career. There are few sports media professionals as fanatically despised as Hill, dating back to her time at the Orlando Sentinel a decade ago. While she has gotten herself into trouble in some cases — most infamously mentioning the Celtics and Hitler in the same sentence in a 2008 column — it is also the case that there is a virtual beat devoted to highlighting any controversial comment she might make.
Given ESPN’s traditional response to controversy is to hurriedly distance itself as much as possible, Hill could not simultaneously continue on SportsCenter and also speak her mind on the issues of the day. That would not ordinarily be a problem for a SportsCenter anchor, as the job description used to simply entail delivering the highlights. Hill, however, was hired to give opinions on sports topics at a time when sports and politics are more intertwined than ever. It was an inevitability that in that role, she would ruffle feathers again. She had to know that her firing from the show, and likely from the network, was an inevitability.
In her new role on The Undefeated, Hill figures to attract less attention. She may well have a shot at completing the remaining three years on her contract.
