Ryan Clark ESPN departure and Kyren Lacy comments, Digi Mart USA News: In late July, ESPN laid off Ryan Clark as part of a larger round of layoffs, but he said he nearly walked away months earlier over pressure to apologize for his comments about former LSU star receiver Kyren Lacy.
In April 2025, Lacy died in an apparent suicide. Earlier that year, he had been arrested and charged with negligent homicide, felony hit-and-run with death, and reckless operation of a vehicle in connection with a crash that killed an elderly man.
By October, Lacy’s attorney publicly shared video depicting Lacy away from the scene at the time of the fatal crash. Shortly afterward, Clark vouched for Lacy’s innocence alongside Scott Van Pelt on SportsCenter following Monday Night Football.
Days later, however, Louisiana State Police responded to the attorney’s claims and stated that “all evidence supports” Lacy’s culpability in the crash.
The following day, Clark apologized for his comments while appearing on First Take. That seemed to close the matter, but Clark later said something else was happening behind the scenes at ESPN.
In his apology, he said he knew Lacy personally and that he failed to gather all factual information before speaking on air.
On Thursday, Clark appeared on All The Smoke with Matt Barnes to discuss his ESPN departure, his work on The Pivot, and more. Asked whether he felt restricted at ESPN, Clark named Seth Markman as “the only person I felt comfortable with” at an executive level, saying Markman stood up for him when an unnamed higher-up urged him to stick to football.
Clark recounted what happened after the Lacy comments. He said Van Pelt agreed at halftime to let him speak on SportsCenter, and that the next day Dave Roberts told him he needed to apologize.
Clark said he did not believe he had misstated a fact or told a lie, and so saw nothing to apologize for.
Clark said he then told his wife, Yonka, that he planned to quit ESPN, because he had been told that if he did not apologize, he could not work. His wife encouraged him not to make the apology a fight he would lose.
Clark then asked ESPN PR whether he could write his own apology, saying ESPN initially wanted a written statement posted on Twitter, which irked him because colleagues had been allowed to apologize live on air.
With ESPN behind him, Clark can now focus on The Pivot, an honoree on this year’s Awful Announcing Sports Podcast Power List.
