Shannon Sharpe to step away from ESPN duties amid ongoing lawsuit

Former NFL football player and sports analyst Shannon Sharpe poses at a special screening of the Netflix documentary film "The Redeem Team," Sept. 22, 2022, at Netflix Tudum Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

Editor’s note: This report contains graphic descriptions of sexual acts.

Shannon Sharpe has said he will temporarily take time away from his role on ESPN after being sued for assault, sexual assault, battery and sexual battery. He denies the allegations in the lawsuit filed Sunday by an anonymous woman and her attorneys.

Sharpe plays a prominent part on ESPN’s morning sports debate show “First Take.”

“I will be devoting this time to my family, and responding and dealing with these false and disruptive allegations set against me. I plan to return to ESPN at the start of the NFL preseason,” Sharpe said in a statement issued on Thursday.

The Pro Football Hall of Famer concluded by thanking his “family, fans, friends and colleagues” for their support.

CNN has reached out to ESPN for comment.

Sharpe’s legal representatives previously told CNN the lawsuit was an attempt to “shake down” the popular podcaster for millions of dollars and said he “categorically denies all allegations of coercion or misconduct.”

In the suit filed in a Las Vegas district court, “Jane Doe” accuses the popular host of the “Club Shay Shay” podcast of “manipulating and controlling” the plaintiff during a nearly two-year period that started in 2023 as a consensual relationship when the woman was 20 years old.

The civil complaint alleges Sharpe, 56, “violently sexually assaulted and anally raped Plaintiff,” in October 2024 and again in January of this year in Las Vegas, Nevada, “blatantly ignoring her requests for him to stop.”

The suit states: “After many months of manipulating and controlling Plaintiff — a woman more than thirty years younger than he — and repeatedly threatening to brutally choke and violently slap her, Sharpe refused to accept the answer no and raped Plaintiff, despite her sobbing and repeated screams of ‘no.’”

When asked if Jane Doe had contacted police during or after the alleged assaults, the plaintiffs’ attorney, Tony Buzbee, said he could not comment.

The attorney told CNN, “It takes a great deal of courage to stand up against those with power, fame and money. I look forward to pressing this case in court.”

Sharpe’s attorney, Lanny J. Davis, said the woman is attempting to blackmail his client and that the pair’s relationship was consensual and “sexual in nature — and, in many cases, initiated by her with specific and graphic requests.”

Davis said Sharpe “looks forward to vindication through due process and a judgment based on the facts and the law.”

The complaint is seeking compensatory and punitive damages of more than US$50 million.

The Pro Football Hall of Famer was inducted as part of the Class of 2011. He was drafted by the Denver Broncos in 1990 and retired following the 2003 season as the NFL’s all-time leader in catches, yards and touchdowns by a tight end.

Sharpe won two Super Bowls with Denver and then another while a member of the Baltimore Ravens.

David Close and Thomas Schlachter, CNN