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Kenny Mayne is leaving ESPN because Worldwide Leader won’t show him the money
Updated 11:31 AM;
Today 11:29 AM
ESPN anchor Kenny Mayne announced Monday he is leaving the network after 27 years with the Worldwide Leader.Kelly Backus / ESPN Images
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Money talks. Even in broadcasting.
I am leaving ESPN. Salary cap casualty. Thanks for the opportunity Vince Doria & Al Jaffe & for taking my solicitations Herman/Stinton/Lynch. I will miss the people. I will miss the vending machine set up over by the old Van Pelt joint. We had everything. IntoTheGreatWideOpen#
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In a conversation with The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch, the 61-year-old Mayne revealed the decision came down to money.
Herman/Stinton/Lynch.
I will miss the vending machine set up over by the old Van Pelt joint.
We had everything.
In addition to anchoring, he produced feature pieces including Mayne Street, in which he played a fictionalized version of himself, according to ESPN. These often aired on Sunday NFL Countdown.
Before his time at ESPN, Mayne saw some success in college sports. The native of Kent, Wash., attended Wenatchee Valley Community College where he earned an honorable mention junior college All-American quarterback in 1978, according to ESPN. He went on to the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, where he played two years of football and graduated before signing as a free agent with the Seattle Seahawks in 1982.
Mayne joined ESPN on a full-time basis in 1994. He had previously worked for Seattle’s KSTW from 1982-89, then did odd jobs including telemarketing, sales, and even garbage can assembly, but he repeatedly pitched ESPN, and eventually got some freelance work there and then a full-time job there. At ESPN, he worked on
SportSmash and
SportsCenter, then did horse racing and
Sunday NFL Countdown features called
The Mayne Event, then scripted series
Mayne Street and then the world-travelling
Kenny Mayne’s Wider World of Sports before rejoining
SportsCenter in 2013. Here’s a classic
The Mayne Event clip: