Pro Football Talk first reported this, and it was later picked up by Deadspin and the AOL Fanhouse. Now, Neil Best of Newsday and Michael Hiestand of USA Today have confirmed that Joe Theismann has been removed as an analyst for Monday Night Football.
Reached on his cell phone, Theismann declined comment “until I fully understand what has taken place” but did not deny the news and hinted that it came as a shock.
Theismann is believed to have been informed Friday. An ESPN spokesman said only ‘we have nothing to announce.’“
Interesting that Best would cite an ESPN spokesman saying that the network ‘had nothing to announce’, considering that said spokesman made that statement to Michael David Smith of the AOL Fanhouse.
“So is Joe Theismann off ESPN’s Monday Night Football broadcast? I posed the question to ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz via e-mail, and this was all he had to say in his reply: ‘Thanks for checking. We have Nothing to announce.’“
Ron Jaworski is the likely candidate to replace Theismann. Hiestand surmises that “Theismann could end up with other roles on ESPN/ABC’s football coverage just as Mike Patrick and Paul Maguire were retained for ABC’s college football coverage after they were removed from ESPN’s primetime NFL game coverage…“
