H
How did he sacrifice for her?
By going along with her bullshit.
Well, even if he agreed with her..........as a man.........he should've seen the handwriting on the wall and told her they need to chill if they want to stay on the air.
Some people might call that selling out, but it would be more like protecting their platform.
Neither of their careers has been the same since they "left" ESPN.
Having said all that, they might not be totally to blame.
For a while, their show His & Hers was more popular than First Take.
Problem with that was they were only on for an hour..........but First Take was on for over 2 hours.
Longer show...........more advertising revenue.
People stop watching First Take........they lose money.
So they offered Jemele and Mike a quote/unquote "promotion" to do the 6pm Sportscenter.
Which, on the surface, seemed like a smart move........because, from what I heard, it was a huge salary bump.
So it's understandable why they would see it as a promotion, but it was really a move to prevent them from taking ratings and advertising dollars away from First Take.
I knew it wouldn't work out because the type of things they did at noon on their own show wouldn't fly at 6pm because those are two different audiences.
Eventually, ESPN management shut them down by forcing them to just do interviews with sideline reporters at game sites as pregame coverage for upcoming sporting events.
In all fairness, even though I know Jemele was the root cause of this...........Michael Smith has to take responsibility too for choosing to go along with her.
I know people like
@IP360 say that they were on the same page, but the fact that you don't hear him saying anything along the lines of what she's saying now is proof enough that he has more sense than her.
Too bad he didn't use it when he had the chance.