Former Patriots running back Craig James, who lost his job commentating on college football for FOX Sports after just one week, now says he was the victim of religious discrimination, and he has hired a lawyer to do something about it.
James spent one week working for FOX Sports Southwest before FOX announced that he would not be back, citing anti-gay comments James had made. James now says those comments were expressions of his religious beliefs, and he says FOX’s statement about his termination was tantamount to a ban on religious people working at the network.
“I was shocked that my personal religious beliefs were not only the reason for Fox Sports firing me but I was completely floored when I read stories quoting Fox Sports representatives essentially saying that people of faith are banned from working at FOX Sports,” James told Breitbart.com. “That is not right and surely someone made a terrible mistake.”
But FOX did not say people of faith are banned from working at FOX Sports. What FOX said was that James’s anti-gay comments would not be tolerated by FOX’s human resources department. FOX also says James is a polarizing figure, and that his initial hiring was not properly vetted.
James was a Pro Bowler in 1985 and had a successful broadcasting career at ESPN, which he left to run for the U.S. Senate in his home state of Texas. James finished a distant fourth in the Republican primary, with 4 percent of the vote. ESPN said during James’s Senate campaign that he would not be brought back, and other than that one week at FOX Sports Southwest, he has not found work in broadcasting since leaving ESPN.