Just ahead of the Super Bowl in Feb., ESPN and the NFL Network benched Michael Irvin after a Marriott hotel worker made unspecified claims of sexual harassment. Now the hotel chain is revealing some specifics about the claims lodged against the broadcaster.
The cable network moved quickly to take Irvin off its Super Bowl broadcast team only a few days before the big game after a hotel worker made vague claims of the sexual harassment she said she faced from Irvin in the lobby of his hotel.
The hotel chain immediately told Irvin he was no longer welcome there and informed ESPN of its decision to boot the ex-Cowboys star from his room. ESPN, then, told Irvin he was not going to broadcast from the Super Bowl with the allegations hanging over his head.
Now, according to Daily Beast, Marriott officials have revealed exactly what the woman claims Irvin said to her that constituted sexual harassment.
“Irvin… asked the Victim whether she knew anything about having a ‘big Black man inside of [her],” Marriott’s legal team said in its filing on Friday.
NFL legend and sports commentator Michael Irvin looks on during the Thursday night NFL game between the Atlanta Falcons and the New England Patriots on November 18, 2021, at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia. (David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Irvin denies the accusations. The former NFL player immediately went on a PR tour of radio shows to proclaim his innocence and claimed he didn’t even remember what he said to the woman.
“Honestly, I’m a bit baffled with it all,” Irvin told the hosts of the Shan & RJ show on 105.3 the Fan in Dallas on Feb. 8 after being booted from the hotel.
“This all happened in a 45-second conversation in the lobby,” he continued. “When I got back after going out … I came into the lobby, and I talked to somebody. I talked to this girl. I don’t know her, and I talked to her for about 45 seconds. We shook hands. Then, I left. … That’s all I know.”
Later, he blasted the hotel for perpetrating a “lynching” against him.
Former Cowboys WR Michael Irvin said Marriott’s treatment of him “sickens” him, likening it to a Black man being lynched because of a false accusation from a white woman. pic.twitter.com/qZlLp71dW0
— Michael Gehlken (@GehlkenNFL) March 8, 2023
“This sickens me,” Irvin said on March 8. “Because in this great country, this takes me back to a time where a white woman would accuse a black man of something, and they would take a bunch of guys that were above the law, run into the barn, put a rope around his foot, and drag him through the mud and hang him by the tree.”
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