ESPN broadcaster Jemele Hill is exiting her 6 p.m. hour of SportsCenter, The Hollywood Reporter revealed Friday.
The move comes on the heels of Hill’s controversial tweets about President Donald Trump in regards to the national anthem protests sweeping the NFL.
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Hill’s last day on the show will reportedly be Friday, February 2, two days before the Super Bowl. Michael Smith will host the program on his own, as he did when Hill was suspended in October for a separate series of tweets about the NFL.
The commentator’s tweet in September calling President Trump a “white supremacist” caused serious tensions on Twitter; the anti-Trump left hailed her as a hero, while White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders called for her firing from the network.
Following the post, Hill was reprimanded by then ESPN president John Skipper, but it was a tweet about Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones that got her suspended for two weeks from the show. She encouraged her followers to boycott the team after Jones told his players they would be benched if they did not stand for the playing of the national anthem.
While broadcasters are not banned from expressing their opinions on their personal social media accounts, ESPN has a $15.2 billion deal with the league to broadcast Monday Night Football, so the personal jab blending sports, social issues and politics apparently crossed the line.
Following her Twitter jab at President Trump, Hill remained mostly quiet on the issue, but she has spoken up about the slam in recent interviews
“I don’t really have any regrets about the language I used because I do think that there is some evidence to as least where we can question some of the things that [Trump] has said and done,” she told Sports Illustrated‘s Richard Deitsch.
While Hill is exiting Sportscenter, she will, however, remain at ESPN, where she is one year into her four-year contract. Hill will write for ESPN vertical The Undefeated and will host town hall sessions.
