Olbermann smooching up to ESPN honcho, hoping to return?

Maybe ESPN should force Olbermann and Mariotti to work together on-camera.

See who cracks first.

 

I certainly can't see any way this could go wrong...

 

I was going to post that with Fox and NBC looking like they want to make a legitimate run at challenging ESPN, maybe one of them would take a shot on Olbermann, but then I thought about it for a second. I think he's about to learn the hard way that no matter how talented you are, if you are that difficult to work with you are eventually going to run out of places willing to deal with you.

 

Haven't Fox & NBC both fired him already?

 

That's why I said I thought about it for a second and realized that wouldn't happen. Maybe he can work for BBC or something because he's exhausting his options in this country.

 

Smart move would be to drop his Current suit and beg al-Jazeera to hire him.

 

I don't think Keith is big on soccer, so that lets BEin out.

 

It seems to me the best fit would be to work out a deal with MLB Network as some kind of contributor that absolutely minimizes his contact with other people.

 

If contact with others is the problem, he should write. TV is always collaborative no matter what you do.

 

Baseball America tried him as a columnist several years ago and he was awful.

 

Yeah, that's the problem for Olbermann. He's not great as a general writer. He's a great TV writer. He's brilliant at delivering the lines on TV. If you can minimize how big a pain in the ass he'll be, he's worth.

Everyone thinks they can pull that off. It hasn't succeeded yet.

 

I think Olbermann could have a future not as a traditional columnist but as a "quick hit" expert on baseball.

His bridge repair attempt to ESPN is about 16 years too late. He was once a pioneer in his field. Since he left Bristol, I don't think there's a single place he "ended well" in.

In 1997, Olbermann was the gold standard. He also spawned about 500 future TV sports anchors (myself included) who wrote with a similar level of energy, irony and snark. Some of those 500 now have the plum jobs in the business, including ESPN, and we are all easier to work with than Keith Olbermann.