Jay Williams Reveals He Could Be Done With ESPN After Contract Expires: ‘You Can Never Really Be Your F*cking Self’

The end of Jay Williams’ time at ESPN could be near.

Speaking candidly about the end of his contract in about three months, Williams revealed he viewed the current state of the network as less than promising.

“This is part of the problem,” Williams said on Patrick Beverley’s The Pat Bev Podcast. “You can never really be your fucking self.”

The former player said he takes issue with the process of creating content for the purpose of generating buzz.

“I don’t care if you’re Stephen A. Smith; I don’t care if you’re my boy Alan Hahn or Max Kellerman,” Williams said. “We can sit up here and do the tit-for-tat, play the innuendos, let me give you a tease… We can do all that. Look, I get how the media industry works and I get how those are cliffhangers, which social media feeds on and articles feed on. It feels like media cannibalizing media right now. And I get how that game is played, but sometimes that game gets boring to me, dog.”

Williams — who first made a name for himself with Duke University’s men’s basketball team — said he’d prefer to talk about sports without having to rely on hot takes. He also commended Beverley for the atmosphere cultivated on his podcast.

“This,” Williams said when asked what he thinks is the ideal way to run a sports network, “like how you create an environment in which you can have your drink, [Beverley] can have his tea or whatever he’s sipping on to set the mood. Everybody can just be themselves authentically and not feel like you have to give a take on something. Not everything requires some kind of polarizing POV.”

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