Former Chicago Sun-Times columnist and ESPN sports personality Jay Mariotti, whose career came to a screeching halt when he was arrested for stalking and assault-related charges in 2010, has been hired by the San Francisco Examiner as its sports director.

Here’s the Examiner’s announcement and the Chronicle’s take.

Mariotti

While Mariotti spent 16 years at the Sun-Times, he gained a national presence on the ESPN show “Around The Horn,” where sports talking heads yell at each other.

When it comes to covering pro teams, Mariotti was never a homer. Former Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen called him a gay slur, but apologized later. When Mariotti left the Sun-Times in 2008 to write for AOL, and proclaimed print was dead, Roger Ebert wrote a scathing column about Mariotti titled “Jay The Rat.”

Mariotti lost his gig at ESPN when he was arrested for domestic violence and stalking a then-girlfriend. He took a plea bargain that spared him from the possibility of being convicted and sentenced to five years in prison, according to the LA Times.

As the Chronicle put it, “Mariotti was confident that he would be accepted in San Francisco, where
accusations of domestic violence — later dropped — against Ross
Mirkarimi nearly ousted him from the San Francisco sheriff’s office in
2012.”

According to the Chronicle, Mariotti compared the plight of the Examiner to “what I walked into at the Sun-Times. But I was able to keep it alive.”