ESPN’s Peyton Manning Hail Mary is hanging by a thread

ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro is going to have to do his best John Calipari recruiting impersonation to have any shot at landing Peyton Manning for “Monday Night Football.”

And, even if Pitaro is Calipari-esque, it is unlikely to work.

As The Post reported a couple of weeks ago, Manning is ESPN’s first choice to replace Jason Witten in the MNF booth, but it remains a Hail Mary.

ESPN’s top two executives — Pitaro and Connor Schell — did hold a meeting with Manning in Denver last week, as the Hollywood Reporter reported. Manning has yet to turn down the opportunity.

But there is no evidence yet that Manning will say yes to ESPN, as he declined MNF last year and he has said no thanks to CBS and Fox before.

To finally go into the booth, Manning will likely need everything to line up right, which it doesn’t appear to with MNF; especially after Manning saw fellow Tennessee alum, Witten, go from “Captain America” to America’s punch line under ESPN’s watch last year.

During negotiations last winter with Fox, and with Joe Buck not an option yet, Fox looked into if it could borrow Mike Tirico to do Thursdays to entice Manning, but NBC was uninterested in such an arrangement. It is unclear if Manning would want to work with current MNF play-by-player, Joe Tessitore.

Sources familiar with his thinking said Manning is just figuring out if he wants to go into broadcasting.

Manning has developed a relationship with Pitaro, sources said, through Manning’s ESPN+ show, Detail. There have been talks about other projects with ESPN for Manning.

At the moment, the big one, though, is MNF — and Pitaro is going to have to recruit like he is Calipari.

If not, Tessitore and Booger McFarland returning as a twosome is the odds on favorite, but there is no guarantee just yet.

A few years ago, when ESPN had their layoffs, there were a bunch of head-scratchers and Doug Glanville was one of them. Glanville known as an all-around good guy and a smart analyst was put on waivers.

Glanville will return to ESPN this season, sources tell The Post. In the part-time role, Glanville, who never moved from Connecticut, will appear on ESPN shows when breaking baseball news happens.

His role could grow, but, for now, he will continue his work on the Cubs pregame show for NBC Sports Chicago, as a lecturer on Athletes & Activism at Yale; as well as a contributing writer to the New York Times and The Athletic.

Fox News: For its new college football show, Fox would have tabled the idea if it didn’t land big names, like Urban Meyer, Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart and Brady Quinn, according to sources. It didn’t want to just put any show on the air; even with the 11 a.m. Saturday fall network window cleared throughout the country.

While Quinn had an excellent career at Notre Dame, he didn’t have the college resume of the other three. Still, he is considered the linchpin of the show because of his brash personality.

Fox will try to capitalize on having its best game of the day on at noon, hoping more and more viewers start watching the last 15 minutes of the show and it increases as time goes on. It may not work, but as strategies go to take on ESPN’s legendary GameDay, Fox has strong logic behind theirs.

On his national radio show Tuesday, Stephen A. Smith asked ESPN colleague Jeff Passan if Mike Scioscia would have more pressure on him after the Mike Trout deal with the Angels. Scioscia is no longer the manager of the Angels.

Stephen A. was quick to apologize, but the recent trend of his bloopers further exposes how the idea of a generalists is out of date. While there are a few who can still do it, it is very difficult to be an expert on everything or even keeping track of all the basic facts; especially when every misstep is recorded online and there are so many actual authoritative voices easily accessible.

Here is a little secret about the majority of the desk jockeys: On most, but not all, subjects, they are full of it, no matter how confident they make their opinions sound.

ESPN announced Alex Rodriguez’s “Pivot” will debut next Thursday on ESPN2 at 11 p.m. The show, a mere 10 months in the making, will be a half hour with Rodriguez interviewing Red Sox manager Alex Cora, Mets GM Brodie Van Wagenen and NL MVP Christian Yelich.

The program announced to much fanfare at the advertising Upfronts last May was supposed to be four parts, showcasing A-Rod doing “in-depth, one-on-one interview with a current or former star athlete who is navigating through obstacles in their life and career.” It feels like A-Rod and ESPN are just checking off a mark to say they actually did it with the next Upfronts less than three months away.

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