OT: ESPN still pays Brett McMurphy, gets nothing in return

One of the interesting side-stories to the Urban Meyer scandal is Brett McMurphy. Even after being fired by ESPN, he continues to report on big time college football stories, often the first to report them. He has proven to be one of the most connected college football reporters, raising he question of why ESPN let him go in the first place.

However, I didn’t realize that McMurphy is still being paid by ESPN, due to his approach to handling his non-compete contract. He is breaking all of these stories and getting tons of credit, while ESPN is still paying him and gets nothing.

A recent Deadspin article sheds some light on how ESPN operates...

“The majority of the people [that were laid off] had long-term deals,” McMurphy said. “The thinking is, ‘Why would they lay off someone when they have that much time left?’ Well, they’re actually diabolical, because what they do is, they lay off all these hard-working, aggressive analysts and reporters and think, ‘They are not going to want to go one, two, three years being out of the game.’ So what happens is, I could take another job after I got laid off at ESPN, but then ESPN would be off the hook for paying me the rest of my contract.”

McMurphy figured out ESPN’s scheme and stuck it to them...

So, McMurphy, realizing the game ESPN was playing, talked to a couple lawyers to see how he could skirt the non-compete and continue his reporting work. They told him that as long as McMurphy didn’t violate the non-compete and produce work for another company or a third-party, which could possibly include a site like Medium, ESPN would be on the hook to pay him his salary every two weeks for the next 18 months. And, unfortunately for ESPN, he didn’t exactly disappear.

ESPN could’ve had all these big stories. Instead, they are paying to not have them.

Full article is an interesting read: https://deadspin.com/how-espn-ended-up-paying-brett-mcmurphy-to-post-the-yea-1828089258