After firing him six years ago because his politics leaned too far to the right, cable sports network ESPN is rehiring Hank Williams, Jr., as its face for Monday Night Football.
ESPN has announced that Hank “Bocephus” Williams will be back singing the Monday Night Football theme featuring the catch phrase refrain, “Are you ready for some football?”
“I think it’s a return to our past in that it’s such an iconic song associated with football,” Stephanie Druley, ESPN’s senior vice president of events and studio production, told USA Today.
“I hope there will be some happy people on Monday night again,” Williams said of his reinstatement. “It feels natural, fulfilling and satisfying at this point when you’ve kind of done it all.”
The cable sports giant fired the country artist in 2011 after he tweeted remarks about President Barack Obama.
Oddly, Sporting News attempted to use ESPN’s rehiring of the conservative-minded country artist as a means to proclaim the cable network’s liberal bias has now been eliminated.
For Sporting News, Jordon Heck insisted, “After ESPN’s recent publicized layoffs, many argued the reason the network is struggling is because it was too liberal leaning. Some feel like this hiring should halt that argument.”
It is an odd claim that ten years of extreme liberal bias could be erased by allowing Hank Williams, Jr., to sing a song for a few minutes once each week, while otherwise doing nothing about the daily liberal bias spewed by hosts, sportscasters, and writers.
ESPN’s Druley said he isn’t much worried about any backlash against rehiring Williams and bringing a known center-right personality back to the network.
“I’m sure there’ll be some, but I’m not concerned. It was the right time,” Druley said. “We discussed it internally, and it was just the right time to bring him back.”
Recently, Williams explained how he became the voice of football:
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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