Suzy Kolber has kept things close to the vest since she was unceremoniously let go by ESPN three summers ago.
A titan of her industry, the former Monday Night Countdown stalwart has emerged here and there to offer condolences and share fond memories of the late Chris Mortensen. But she hasn’t fully divulged details about her surprise exit from the Worldwide Leader. But she hasn’t fully divulged details about her surprise exit from the Worldwide Leader, despite there having been several rounds of layoffs since then that have also claimed ESPN lifers like Karl Ravech, Stephania Bell, and David Lloyd, among others.
That is, until now.
In a recent sit-down with Richard Deitsch of Sports Business Journal — for his Sports Media with Richard Deitsch podcast — Kolber waded through what she called a “wide range of emotions” since departing Bristol. Now 62, she’s waited a few years to get back into sports media, revealing to Deitsch that she’ll serve as an on-air host and executive producer for a new Scripps Sports Network series called The Originals, an interview show that will feature guests including Jon Gruden, Lisa Salters, and Steve Young, to name a few.
Kolber’s previous life at ESPN dates back to 1993, when she joined the launch team for ESPN2 and served as a SportsCenter anchor among a string of other high-profile roles. After a three-year stint at Fox, she returned to Bristol in 1999 and became one of the network’s central NFL voices, eventually anchoring Monday Night Countdown before her exit. Scott Van Pelt has since replaced her in that chair, joined this season by Marcus Spears, Jason Kelce, Devin McCourty, and Pat McAfee.
In her hour-long conversation with Deistch, Kolber said she’d never taken job security for granted in an industry she described as especially unforgiving toward women as they age, and she’d sensed this particular layoff coming weeks in advance. About three weeks before it happened, with Steve Young already identified as one of the round’s high-profile casualties, she asked a boss where she stood. The answer wasn’t reassuring.
“The answer wasn’t, ‘No, you’re safe,'” Kolber said. She remembered breaking down at her kitchen table in front of her daughter once the possibility became real, then getting a call from Young himself asking what she’d heard. “I said, ‘Steve, you know our place. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. The leaks are coming from inside.'”
A week before the layoff, Kolber went to ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro and asked him point blank.
“He said, ‘Suzy, there’s a whiteboard and your name’s on it, and I don’t really know for sure right now, but your name is on it,'” Kolber said. “So, again, not shocked, I tried to prepare myself.”
The actual call came from Norby Williamson, an ESPN lifer who’d started in the network’s mailroom back in 1985 and risen over nearly four decades to become its executive senior vice president of studio and event production, overseeing every studio show and live event ESPN put on air. Kolber said she was at least glad it was someone she’d known since the beginning delivering the news rather than a stranger. She tried to buy herself a little time to compose herself before the conversation happened.
“He texted me and said, ‘Can we talk?'” Kolber said. “I texted back because I had one year left to go on my contract and said, ‘Yes, we can talk a year from now.’ And then I said, ‘Seriously, can you give me a chance to get home and just get myself prepared?'”
One legal formality in that call actually needled her more than the layoff itself. Williamson warned her not to say anything disparaging about the company, or she’d risk forfeiting the final year of her contract.
“That’s when I kind of lost it,” Kolber said. “I said, ‘I have been the ultimate good soldier. All the crap I’ve seen, I have never said one negative thing about this company. Like, do you think I’m going to start now?’ He was like, ‘Oh, you know, I had to say that.'”
ESPN granted her a full summer to clear out her office rather than the standard week, a small mercy she credited to network executives quietly pushing for more time on her behalf. But even the smallest tasks carried a burden given how deeply embedded she’d become at the network over three decades. She’d never once owned a personal laptop or held a non-ESPN email address in her entire adult life.
“So even going to Best Buy on July 4 weekend and buying a laptop, it was tough,” Kolber said. “That weekend was tough.”
What actually wounded her most, though, wasn’t the layoff itself. It was ESPN’s silence afterward, especially given everything she felt she’d poured into the network over nearly three decades, from launching ESPN2 from the ground up, covering the X Games since its inception, or standing at the center of Monday Night Football’s landmark move to the network.
“I was like, ‘You’re not gonna say a word? Not thanks for 27 years. Just acknowledge it?'” Kolber said. “I didn’t understand that.”
She also wanted to set the record straight that money wasn’t actually the reason for her exit, given that most of ESPN’s layoffs in recent years have been publicly attributed to cost-cutting measures, or, in 2026, to the network’s integration of NFL Media following its acquisition of NFL Network.
In the contract just before her layoff, Kolber said she’d already agreed to a 39% pay cut, even as she understood ESPN was negotiating to roughly triple the salary of a younger, rising star elsewhere on staff. She said she accepted the cut willingly, in exchange for scaling her year-round workload down to just Monday nights, the draft and the Super Bowl, so she could finally have something resembling a normal life with her teenage daughter.
“I did think the 39% cut was going to get me to the end of the contract,” Kolber said.
It did not.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.