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ESPN host Stephen A. Smith has a reputation for shooting from the hip with outrageous takes on sports issues. Today, he turned the attention on himself, candidly admitting his role in having First Take co-host Max Kellerman removed from the show.

First Take is one of the highest-rated ESPN shows, although its audience has dwindled since Skip Bayless left for Fox in 2016. The Smith-Kellerman marriage resulted from that, but apparently soured over the long term, according to Smith, who talked to Hot 97 radio’s Ebro Darden and Peter Rosenberg..

“The rumor’s accurate in terms of me wanting him off the show,” Smith said of Kellerman. It “was not a great partnership anymore and that was something that needed to change.”

Smith felt that the team had hit a wall.

“It wasn’t really about asking him to be off the show, it was about the fact that I knew that we,...

ESPN’s Max Kellerman is exiting “First Take,” the morning show he has co-hosted since 2016.

The announcement of Kellerman’s exit from the show came Tuesday, when ESPN unveiled its revamped radio lineup, with Kellerman set to join the morning talk show “Keyshawn, JWill & Max” — previously known as “Keyshawn, JWill & Zubin” until co-host Zubin Mehenti departed due to health issues.

Kellerman has appeared on ESPN’s popular “First Take” alongside Stephen A. Smith and Molly Qerim Rose since July 2016, when he replaced Skip Bayless. No replacement for Kellerman was named, but the network alluded to an “updated format” for the show in its announcement Tuesday. Previous reports have suggested that Smith will not get a new regular co-host but will be joined by a rotating series of guests moving forward.

In addition to joining ESPN Radio’s morning lineup, Kellerman will also get a new series on the television network,...

Keyshawn Johnson, Jay Williams and Zubin Mehenti have a big radio debut on Monday, when they take over ESPN’s national morning slot. But their new jobs started in earnest on Wednesday.

The trio met in their studio at ESPN’s New York production facility for the first time, ready to test out their rapport. “I think if you took out the bumps in the road and you put that in the can, that could have been a show,” says Johnson.

It probably won’t be that easy.

Johnson, Williams and Mehenti are taking over a slot inhabited by only a few voices in the past two decades, with Mike Golic talking to A.M. sports fans between 1998 and 2020, joined by Mike Greenberg for 17 years. ESPN raised eyebrows in July when executives announced they were taking Golic off the program. Greenberg had departed to host ESPN’s morning-tv program “Get Up” in 2018. On Monday,...

Mike Greenberg must move fast as the host of ESPN’s “Get Up” each weekday morning. He’s hoping a new radio gig in the afternoons will give him the chance he needs to slow things down.

“On the TV show, we are just flying through stuff. The average interview on my show in the morning is – a long interview for us is six or seven minutes. On the radio, I could see us doing 15, 16, 17 minutes when the circumstances call for it,” says Greenberg, in an interview that is just a little longer than the time he wants for radio sessions. “It’s not every day that you have the right opportunities and the right subject matter to do that.”

Greenberg is making a return to familiar territory but hoping to blaze a different path when he gets there. His new program, “Greeny” – ESPN originally called it “The Mike Greenberg Show,...

Mike Golic will soon be without an ESPN Radio show, but he’s not out of 2020 ESPN gigs yet — assuming Covid-19 cooperates.

On Monday’s “Golic & Wingo” show, Golic, who is under contract with ESPN for the remainder of the year, said that he approached management and asked to return to calling college football games for the company’s cable channel. That’s where the former Notre Dame standout and NFL lineman got his post-football start in media.

ESPN gave the green light to that idea — should collegiate sports actually return amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Also Read: Mike Golic Says ESPN Radio Exit 'Was Management's Choice'

“I asked ESPN for this season if I can — and maybe beyond, we’ll see — continue to call college games, and that’s what I’m going to do if there are college games,” Golic said this morning. “I’m gonna call college games,...

ESPN said it would cancel its flagship morning radio program, “Golic & WIngo,” while bringing Mike Greenberg, half of the team that helped the Disney sports-media giant carve a bigger business in the audio world, back to the medium as part of a reworking of its national lineup.

Greenberg, who spent 17 years with co-host Mike Golic on the morning radio program “Mike & Mike,” will keep his duties on the ESPN mid-morning TV program, “Get Up,” which he has helped anchor since the Spring of 2018. But he will also lead a new two-hour radio show that airs between noon and 2 p.m. weekdays. His former partner, Mike Golic will leave mornings along with Trey Wingo. The pair has hosted their program since November of 2017.

“Our new lineup will provide sports fans informative and engaging content throughout the week from hosts who all have radio experience,” said Norby Williamson, ESPN’s executive vice president and executive editor,...