Michael Irvin recently returned to sports television under ambiguous circumstances. NFL Network took the Pro Football Hall of Famer off the air after he allegedly sexually harassed a woman at a hotel earlier this year. The alleged incident took place during Super Bowl week and resulted in Irvin receiving an indefinite suspension.
But now Irvin has since resurfaced. The former Dallas Cowboys star is now part of FS1’s rotating cast on its lead morning talk show Undisputed. But since returning, NFL Network stayed relatively mum on his status. Tuesday’s release of the network’s 2023 broadcasting lineup for the upcoming season did all the talking necessary.
The lineup omitted Irvin, thus likely signaling the end of his run with NFL Network. Their network’s press release featured several of the network’s longest-tenured presences, including Rich Eisen, Kurt Warner, and Steve Mariucci, but no Michael Irvin is in sight.
This conclusion probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Irvin maintained innocence throughout the process, which evidently is good enough for Fox. In the same way that Fox has every right to take Irvin on if they don’t think it will be an issue, NFL Network also has every right to move on if they don’t think they can trust him. His indefinite suspension and the network’s insistence not to back down from it tell you all you probably need to know about how they felt about the situation.
Which isn’t to, once again, say that Fox is necessarily wrong for picking him up, either. It just wasn’t something that NFL Network likely felt that they were good with proceeding on.
About Chris Novak
Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022