Former radio host Chris Vernon spoke at an event at Rhodes College in which he opened up about his love for Tony Allen and the real reasons behind his split with ESPN Radio in Memphis.
Chris Vernon has been in the headlines recently after a messy breakup with ESPN Radio in Memphis. There was a lot of questions raised about the nature of the split, but Vernon’s epic Twitter thread about his release from ESPN. However, Vernon spoke with a Reddit user recently at an event at Rhodes College about the release and what the real reasoning was behind his dismissal.
#FreeVerno
According to Reddit user, Davis Howe Vernon said:
"“I fully expect to stay (in Memphis to cover the Grizzlies), I’m not moving. I expect in the next 2-3 days I’ll be able to talk about what’s moving.”"
Howe also went onto say indirectly:
"“He talked a lot about how he thought radio was on the downturn and how he was planning on pivoting to something new. Said the contract he got offered was crap money and for 3 whole years. Vernon said he was willing to do one more year, and would have considered two, but the initial contract offer of awful pay and three years meant he thought he’d be stuck in a job he didn’t want watching offers go by and getting resentful. So he left.”"
This statement opens up on the whole fiasco and showed that ESPN was at fault for Vernon’s dismissal and not Vernon himself.
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Grit n’ Grind
At the event, Vernon also told the audience about his love for Tony Allen and the Grizzlies’ culture of grit and grind.
"“Tony Allen had just been signed and was collecting dust on the bench, barely getting playing time. Then the star rookie we had been starting (Xavier Henry) blew his knee out. Thus giving Tony the chance to get real minutes. Tony ends up raising the collective level of play of the Grizz significantly, especially on D, and it culminates in a career game at OKC. Tony earns the first post game interview of his career, and it’s goofy.”"
Bill Simmons
Vernon also talked about the lack of merchandise for Allen at the time and how Bill Simmons caused a huge problem for the radio host.
"“Vernon orders 50 shirts and figures. He should be able to sell most of them because he knows a few guys who’ll want em and has a blog where he posts a link to a picture of the shirt that is just captioned. This is where it gets a little crazy. People start tweeting out this link, and someone sends the link to Bill Simmons. Bill Simmons at this point has 500k twitter followers. Simmons tweets out a link to this teaser with the phrase “Just in time for Father’s Day!”. Chris finds out that Simmons has tweeted this out mid radio show. He’s kind of freaking out since this dude has hella followers and he has literally 50 of these shirts.”"
Chris Vernon has been the voice of Memphis sports talk radio the past few years. He hopes to continue and will be at the Memphis Grizzlies’ media day.