Suzy Kolber says the day let her go in June 2023 started with tears in her kitchen and ended with the reality that her name was on the layoff list. After 27 years at the network, she described the moment as the kind that turns a job into a wound.
Kolber made the comments on the Sports Media with Richard Deitsch podcast, where she said she had gone through the whole range of emotions about leaving. She said she was sitting next to her daughter when she cried because she thought the layoff was really happening, and later said Jimmy Pitaro told her, “Suzy, there’s a whiteboard and your name’s on it and I don’t really know for sure right now, but your name is on it.”
That detail matters because Kolber was not just any on-air figure. She spent nearly three decades at and became one of its most familiar personalities, which made the layoff feel personal inside the company and outside it. The timing also gives the remarks a sharper edge now: Kolber is preparing to return as an executive producer and on-air host for The Originals, a six-episode run that premieres Tuesday at 8pm ET on the Scripps Sports Network.
But the return has not erased everything that came before it. Kolber said there was a year when watching ’s NFL studio programming felt painful, even though she was cheering everyone on and loved Monday Night Countdown. That is the friction in her account: affection for the people and the show on one side, and the sting of being gone on the other. She said the business is cruel and competitive, especially for women as they get older, a judgment that fits the way long careers can narrow in a round of layoffs.
Kolber said she is back to cheering everyone on who is doing the Super Bowl and that she thinks she is back now. The Originals is set to test whether that feels true in practice. Its debut episode features Jesse Cole, and the series also includes Jon Gruden, Lisa Salters, Hilary Knight, Steve Young and Diana Flores, with Jim Carr and Jon Leiberman serving as executive producers alongside Kolber.
What her account makes clear is that the layoff was not just a corporate reset; it was a break in a long working life that took months to stop hurting. Her new series now gives her a public return, but the most revealing part of the story is how long it took before watching felt normal again.
