Craig Carton Wants Mike Tomlin to Replace ‘Insufferable Race-Baiter’ Ryan Clark on ESPN

Now that Mike Tomlin has retired from his 19-year stint as head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, everyone has an idea of where he should go. And some of those ideas have nothing to do with football.

On Wednesday’s edition of The Craig Carton Show, longtime sports radio host and podcaster Craig Carton speculated on Tomlin’s next job. He wondered whether Tomlin would fit best as a talk show host, in a broadcast booth, or even on a Sunday pre-game show.

Then, Carton settled on where Tomlin should go.

“I’ve got the answer,” Carton said. “Mike Tomlin could save us from an insufferable race-baiter on TV. I would fire Ryan Clark and replace him with Mike Tomlin. And the reason I’d do that is, if you make that replacement, Ryan Clark can’t claim racism. He can’t say, ‘You replaced me with a young white guy,’ or a pretty blonde girl. He’d have to eat it because you’re replacing him with a Black guy, right?”

Carton confessed that he used to be a “big fan” of Clark’s, but stopped after Clark became a “race guy.”

Clark, in many ways, has become ESPN’s most prominent hot-take artist outside of Stephen A. Smith. Except that, whereas most of Smith’s hot takes do not involve race, Clark wades into the racial waters quite frequently.

Most notably, Clark took Bills QB Josh Allen (who is white) to task after the Bills lost to the Chiefs in last year’s playoffs. Saying it was time for him to finally beat the other good quarterbacks in the AFC. However, Clark was not nearly as critical of Baltimore Ravens QB Lamar Jackson (who is black) and has a far worse record against star AFC quarterbacks than Allen.

Clark also got into hot water after proclaiming the innocence of deceased former LSU wide receiver Kyren Lacy after watching only one part of a video of a car crash that claimed the life of a 78-year-old Louisiana man. Clark and his other ESPN colleagues, who declared Lacy’s innocence, were then forced to go on-air only days later and retract their comments after the Louisiana State Police released additional video evidence showing how Lacy’s reckless and erratic driving had caused the accident, which killed the man.