David Pollack thrilled by the unshackled freedom of his ESPN firing

To say or not to say?That is not the question.Not for Hamlet.

Not for David Pollack.The one-time ESPN college football analyst says he felt that he couldn’t fully speak his mind while working for the sports and entertainment juggernaut — neither on air, nor on his personal social media channels. “I’ve been very thankful that I’ve been fired,” Pollack told Jason Whitlock on his ‘Fearless’ Podcast.“It’s opened up me to be able to talk about whatever the subject is in a truthful manner.” According to Pollack, no one at ESPN — the sports conglomerate owned by The Walt Disney Company and Hearst Communications — ever specifically told him what was expected of him or what he could and couldn’t say. And yet, “It was very clear— your opinions, your post on social media, while they are yours, they also represent us, [ESPN],” Pollack said.

“[I] one-hundred percent [knew] that.”Pollack believes he’s not the only employee who has had to censor himself so as not to rock the boat or upset that powers that be.To illustrate the quandaries this can lead to, the 42-year-old New Jersey native pointed to an incident involving another ESPN analyst, Dan Orlovsky, earlier in 2024.Orlovsky had posted and then later deleted a post on X referencing unfounded allegations that a boxer fighting in the women’s division at the 2024 Paris Olympics was born with XY chromosomes. During an appearance on the “Pat McAfee Show” Orlovsky said the deletion was in no way ordered by ESPN even though he had spoken at length about the expectations of “an employee of a big company [and his] social media page” in a previous interview.Some drew a connection between this tumult and ESPN’s firing of Sam Ponder, a long-time employee with her own history of speaking out against transgender athletes competing in women’s sports on personal social channels.Pollack was let go as part of a slew of ESPN cuts in the summer of 2023.He has since Photoshopped himself ...