Ex-SportsCenter Anchor Max McGee Breaks Silence on ESPN Firing

Former SportsCenter anchor Max McGee has opened up for the first time since his 2024 dismissal from ESPN. 

McGee posted a video on Instagram last weekend acknowledging that he lost his job due to a workplace investigation. Months after McGee’s dismissal, The Athletic reported that he “was let go in February 2024 after the company received a complaint about him from a female employee.”  

“At the end of that process, I was terminated,” McGee said in the video. “People have asked me ever since what happened. The honest answer is that I can only tell you what I know. I was never provided the specific details of the complaint that ultimately led to that decision. I asked questions, I looked for answers, and I left that process with more uncertainty than clarity.”

In his video, McGee did not address the substance of the complaint against him that led to his firing. An ESPN spokesperson declined to comment on McGee’s video. The network initially hired him in January 2022. He disappeared from the network’s airwaves roughly two years later without a public explanation until The Athletic later reported the circumstances of his firing.

“For the last two years, I’ve mostly stayed quiet. Not because I didn’t have anything to say, but because I was trying to do what I thought was the right thing,” McGee continued on Instagram. “What made it difficult was this wasn’t just a job—this was something I worked years toward.” 

He reflected on his path to ESPN, which included his time at Temple and multiple local news jobs. “Now suddenly it was gone,” McGee said. “Now I’m not making this video to attack anyone [or] blame anyone, and I’m not asking for sympathy. I’m making it because the silence has allowed other people to tell the story for me.”

McGee said that the “uncertainty” of not knowing the reasons behind the outcome of the HR investigation has “been one of the hardest parts of the last two years.” He added that the dismissal cost him job opportunities in television and led him to drive Uber and move back home while he searched for his next opportunity.

“I’ve questioned myself. I’ve been angry, I’ve been embarrassed, I’ve been disappointed, and I’ve wondered whether I’d ever work in television again,” he said. “But I’ve also learned something: You don’t always get closure. You don’t always get a perfect explanation. Sometimes all you can decide is whether you’re going to keep going.” 

McGee said he decided to speak publicly because he felt others had told his story in his absence. He concluded by saying,“ this isn’t the end of my story, this is just a chapter of it.”