Earlier today, Richard Sandomir of the New York Times reported that ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel would not be returning to Monday Night Football after he made a comment referring to the fired Joe Theismann. For his part, Theismann was amused by the comment, but was not watching the game at the time Jimmy was on.
Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated managed to get in touch with Kimmel earlier today and for his part, Jimmy was actually surprised that ESPN went that far to ban him from the MNF booth. In Deitsch’s story, Kimmel is quoted as saying, “I was on for twice as long as I was expecting to be on,” Kimmel said. “There was no set time on how long I was supposed to be in that booth and they could have removed me without me even knowing there was a problem.”
Having read the comments and not hearing them directly, I don’t think the comments were all that bad.
And Deitsch writes that and ESPN spokesperson did not rule Kimmel from returning to MNF in the future so we’ll see. For his part, Jimmy is handling this well and he’ll probably make reference to the whole thing on his show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live” tonight on ABC. It will make for interesting viewing.
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