Tag: Katie Nolan

Sports fans show their support for Katie Nolan after her departure from ESPN

Nolan joined ESPN in 2017.

The past year has seen plenty of on-air talent leave ESPN for various reasons, and that trend continued on Wednesday.

Katie Nolan, who joined ESPN from Fox Sports back in 2017, announced on Twitter that she was no longer working for ESPN.

And just how Fox struggled to utilize her talents despite her leading an Emmy-winning show, ESPN’s approach seemed awfully similar. Nolan hosted Always Late, which was shown at odd times either on ESPN2 or pay-walled on ESPN+. The show was canceled in 2020 before the pandemic brought a wave of layoffs to the network. The next year mainly consisted of Nolan filling spot roles on afternoon shows and hosting her podcast.

She wasn’t exactly in a position to thrive with that programming strategy from ESPN. So, this move felt likely.

Nolan didn’t say what was next for her. But after the announcement, sports fans wished her the best and criticized ESPN for how they handled her time in Bristol.

Alvin Gentry makes appearance on Katie Nolan’s famous people Zoom call

Katie Nolan asked a panel of journalists to get the most famous people they could onto one Zoom video, and Alvin Gentry answered the call.

What do Alvin Gentry, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Mike Schur have in common?

The three appeared on a Zoom call for Always Late with Katie Nolan.

Nolan, who hosts the show for ESPN, got together a panel of journalists to take part in one task: Get the most famous person you know onto this Zoom call.

The group texted around and celebrities — the majority of which were figures in the sports world — popped on with confusion about why they were joining a call with 20 random people.

Gentry made a brief appearance with about three minutes left in the segment with the Golden Gate Bridge as his background. Nolan excitedly welcomed him, but the clip quickly cut when half of Clayton Kershaw’s face popped onto the screen.

 

Who was the most famous person? It’s likely Dwyane Wade, invited by Adam Lefkoe, though Lin-Manuel Miranda’s non-sports following could give him a case. He was invted to join by Shea Serrano.

Tom Brady did not appear, but Andrew Siciliano did hold up a brand-new Brady Tampa Bay Buccaneers jersey while on the call.

Gabrielle Union didn’t join either, but not for lack of trying. “Dwyane, I just texted your wife, I hope that’s OK,” Lefkoe said to laughter from all around.

It’s a 10-minute clip, but apparently it was trimmed by quite a bit: Nolan tweeted that the whole Zoom call was three hours long.

That’s a lot of time spent to interrupt a lot of celebrities — but it’s not like they’re doing anything that important with their time. As Kendrick Perkins mentioned when he appeared, “I’m just in the house man, kids driving me crazy.”

If your choice is between wild children stuck in their third week of quarantine and an unsolicited Zoom call with 20 random participants … well, to be honest, that’s a tough decision.

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Katie Nolan asked ESPN friends to invite famous people to a Zoom call and it got out of control

The results are just spectacular. Lin-Manuel Miranda shows up at one point, because why not?

ESPN’s Katie Nolan is hosting her show this week via Zoom, and as part of a bit, she challenged her friends to invite the most famous person they know to the call, and see who they could get to join.

It starts out fun enough, as they get some people in and around the ESPN and media universe to hop on. But then those famous people got in on the act and started inviting their friends, and before you know it, things got completely and totally out of control.

Dwyane Wade shows up. Lin-Manuel Miranda gets on the call at one point. I don’t want to spoil the rest because it’s more fun to watch as it snowballs and snowballs.

This should just be the show every week. I just want to see the famous people phone tree in action. I’ve long thought that every famous person knows all the other famous people and this proves me to be right.

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