Jemele Hill reportedly is leaving ESPN's 6 pm 'SportsCenter' to work for the Undefeated

Michael Smith and Jemele Hill co-hosted “SC6″ since February. (Bruce Yeung/NBAE via Getty Images)

Jemele Hill’s role as co-anchor of ESPN’s reworked 6 p.m. “SportsCenter” lasted less than one year. On Friday, Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch reported that Hill is leaving the show — which has been rebranded as “SC6″ — to join the staff of the Undefeated, ESPN’s sub-site that examines sports, race and culture.

Deitsch says Hill asked for the assignment switch. In October, the network suspended her for two weeks for violating its social-media policy after she suggested on Twitter that NFL fans could boycott advertisers and vendors associated with the Dallas Cowboys, whose owner, Jerry Jones, said his players will stand for the national anthem or be benched. Hill also had called President Trump a “white supremacist” on Twitter before the suspension, reportedly drawing a warning from her bosses but no punishment.

While serving her suspension, Hill told TMZ that she deserved the punishment and said she was sorry only for dragging ESPN into an unwanted political controversy.

“So, here’s how this works: It doesn’t really matter what I think. It matters to people, but here’s the reality: ESPN acted what they felt was right, and, you know, I don’t have any argument or quibble with that. I would tell people, absolutely, after my Donald Trump tweets, I deserved that suspension. I deserved it. Like, absolutely. I violated the policy; I deserved that suspension,” she said.

“The only thing I’ll ever apologize for is, I put ESPN in a bad spot. I’ll never take back what I said. I put them in a bad spot; that’s the truth of it. I regret the position I put them in. I regret, a lot of the people I work with, the position we put our show in. I’ll never take back what I said.”

The weekday 6 p.m. “SportsCenter” occupies a tricky spot on ESPN’s schedule, as the events of the previous night already are old news while that day’s games usually have yet to be played. So a by-the-book highlight show clearly is not a good use of that time, and that’s where the idea for a more persona-driven edition of “SportsCenter” hosted by Hill and Michael Smith came to fruition last February. But the new show’s ratings did not considerablyimprove from the previous edition of “SportsCenter” hosted by the now-departed Lindsay Czarniak, and in September the network reorganized its management structure. As a result, the Big Lead notes, “SC6″ began to resemble the Czarniak-hosted “SportsCenter” more than the freewheeling style Hill and Smith had honed while hosting “His & Hers,” their previous ESPN show.

It’s unclear what ESPN plans to do with its next iteration of the show.

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