Despite scorched bridges, Olbermann rejoins ESPN
By Michael Hiestand, USA TODAY
Pigs have flown: Keith Olbermann is once again going to cash ESPN paychecks.
ESPN will announce today that Olbermann, a SportsCenter anchor before leaving in 1997, will have an hour-long weekly show on ESPN Radio that will air Friday afternoons and begin this August.
Olbermann\'s exit from ESPN, where Olbermann was known for catchphrases such as "premature jocularity," wasn\'t amicable. He then moved to MSNBC to work on a news show that often focused on Monica Lewinsky.
The job, as Olbermann noted in a 1998 commencement address at his alma mater Cornell, wasn\'t fulfilling: It gave him "dry heaves," and it would "make me ashamed, make me depressed, make me cry."
Olbermann returned to working in sports television by moving to Fox.
After leaving Fox in May 2001, he suggested he\'d like to work for ESPN Radio. He said, "For 20 years, a month hasn\'t gone by when I didn\'t think I\'d get out of this TV nonsense and go back to the relative sanity of radio."
In response to that, ESPN\'s Mike Soltys was unequivocal: "He didn\'t burn bridges here. He napalmed them."
Soltys said Monday that Olbermann has expressed interest in recent years in working again, on TV or radio, for ESPN.
And Soltys now suggests he doesn\'t see Olbermann\'s return as anything bordering on the apocalyptic.
Said Soltys: "Now, I love the smell of napalm on Friday afternoons."
Olbermann, who is back at MSNBC and anchors its primetime news show Countdown With Keith Olbermann, won\'t be returning to ESPN\'s Bristol, Conn., headquarters.
The ESPN radio show, the name of which wasn\'t released Monday, will originate from ESPN Radio 1050 AM in New York City. It will be made available to more than 300 U.S. radio stations that carry ESPN programming.
Olbermann was unavailable for comment Monday.
now get him back on SportsCenter, and we\'ll be all set..
