Next Evolution of Notes App: Shannon Sharpe Temporarily Steps Away from ESPN Amid Lawsuit via Text Screenshot of Statement His Lawyer Prepared For Him
NBC News - Football great Shannon Sharpe said Thursday that he will "step aside temporarily" from his duties at ESPN in the wake of a $50 million lawsuit accusing him of rape.
The 56-year-old former Denver Broncos tight end said he needs time away from the studios to fight allegations that he called "false and disruptive."
"At this juncture I am electing to step aside temporarily from my ESPN duties," he said in a statement.
The first NFL exhibition game is set for July 31 with the regular season likely to kick off on Thursday, Sept. 4. He hopes to be back behind the mic by then.
"I will be devoting this time to my family, and responding and dealing with these false and disruptive allegations set against me," Sharpe said. "I plan to return to ESPN at the start of the NFL preseason."
An ESPN representative said that Sharpe, a frequent panelist on the show "First Take," is right to take a break from the cable sports outfit.
“This is a serious situation, and we agree with Shannon’s decision to step away," the ESPN spokesperson said.
A woman filed a lawsuit in Nevada on Sunday, accusing Sharpe of raping her twice in Las Vegas in October and one more time in January, according to the suit.
The woman said she was 19 years old in 2023 when she first met Sharpe in a Los Angeles gym, leading to a “rocky consensual relationship” of nearly two years in which he was frequently “aggressive” and raped her, according to the Clark County civil complaint.
Really an all-time tweet from Shannon Sharpe here. You know there's a million things he'd rather say right now. I can only imagine all the shit his lawyers have been tirelessly attempting to talk him out of over the past couple days. After numerous back-and-forths, they finally got "Unc" to agree to put out the statement they so carefully crafted for him. But Shannon Sharpe isn't letting anybody put words in his mouth without making it abundantly clear that the words are not actually coming from his mouth. Idk if his lawyers thought it went without saying that he'd at minimum copy & paste their statement into a notes app, and screen shotting the text was just another "fuck you" from Shannon Sharpe to the world. Or if this was their final compromise. That Shannon would release their stupid statement, but only if he could do it in the pettiest, most "I'm only doing this because you're fucking making me" way possible. Either way, I'm sure convincing Shannon Sharpe to do anything he doesn't want to do is like pulling teeth. Just ask... ah never mind. In the end, I'm guessing his lawyers will take this over whatever the alternative was.
Regardless, Shannon Sharpe is stepping away from ESPN. Which isn't all that surprising. Especially now that past employees who've been dismissed, or told to be quiet about certain things by ESPN are coming forward and calling out them out for their hypocrisy.
Which I suppose is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. You can't really expect a Disney owned company to keep trotting out a guy in the midst of an extremely public $50 million dollar rape lawsuit to yell at Stephen A. Smith about Lakers-Timberwolves Game 3. Not during such a vicious, and highly vulgar out-of-context audio recoding text message-off.
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That's a lot of clean-up for Shannon Sharpe to take care of to be ESPN ready by pre-season. Probably $50M worth of it. Kind of a crazy move for "Jane Doe" to go public with all this before he officially signed that upcoming $100M podcast deal. Almost makes you wonder if it's not only about the money. You also have the whole separate incident when Shannon Sharpe was back at FS1 and was accused of choking a production assistant.
Defector - Front Office Sports reported that Sharpe was previously accused of choking a female production assistant while he was a host at FS1. According to the report, Sharpe and Fox reached a settlement with the accuser for several hundred thousand dollars. A rep for Sharpe told the publication: "There was no incident of choking involving Shannon on the FS1 set. On one occasion, he and a few colleagues were involved in some light physical interaction in a playful context. Fox Sports later chose to resolve the matter privately."
I'd say being accused of choking related violence on two separate occasions is at minimum a red flag. But who the hell am I to say. I've never had that type of money for people to come after. All I can do is look at the out-of-context evidence produced by both sides and either A) speculate wildly, or B) refuse to speculate wildly because it's simply not worth it to speculate at all. For now, I'm gonna stick with the latter.