ESPN has informed Senior VP/Programming Acquisitions Burke Magnus that it is not letting him out of his contract early to take a job running IMG College. ESPN President John Skipper and ESPN Exec VP/Programming John Wildhack made separate calls to Magnus late Friday to say that ESPN would not break with company policy and let Magnus leave before his contract ends, which is in about a year and a half. Asked over the weekend about Magnus' status, an ESPN spokesperson e-mailed, "He will be staying with us." WME-IMG officially offered Magnus the job as President & CEO of IMG College, where he would have been working with current IMG College Chair & President Ben Sutton and reporting to WME-IMG co-CEO Patrick Whitesell.
ESPN has had this type of situation before. Last January, it initially refused to allow production executive Jamie Horowitz to break his contract to join NBC's "Today" show. Five months later, ESPN relented and granted Horowitz his release. It is not known whether WME-IMG will try to negotiate a similar deal with ESPN.
