Alright step right up, step right up and place your bets! The Keith Olbermann Countdown has begun. No, not the show that he (in)famously hosted on the MSNBC, and now Al Jazeera America - Current TV networks. This countdown is for his inevitable inevitable ugly departure from ESPN. That’s right ESPN has reached into their past to repair napalmed bridges and bring back Al Qaeda‘s favorite impartial news anchor Keith Olbermann for an 11pm show on ESPN2.

Apparently ESPN2 is where all the, ahem, strong personalities are being stuck by the ESPN bosses. They must have looked at the channel that features the constantly contentious First Take with the often controversial (UNDERSTATEMENT ALERT!) Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith and said “We are just one insufferable blowhard short.”

The current over/under on this betting line is 14 months — which is how long he lasted at Al Gore’s CurrentTV before being fired for not showing up to work and complaining about smelly limo drivers. He then proceeded to burn all bridges with that particular group of slightly less insufferable blowhards by comparing himself favorably to a chandalier:

“I screwed up. I screwed up really big on this. Let’s just start there. I thought we could do this. It’ s my fault that it didn’t succeed in the sense that I didn’t think the whole thing through,” he said. “I didn’t say, ‘You know, if you buy a $10 million chandelier, you should have a house to put it in.’ Just walking around with a $10 million chandelier isn’t going to do anybody a lot of good, and it’s not going to do any good to the chandelier.”

He added, “And then it turned out we didn’t have a lot to put the house in to put the chandelier in or a building permit. And I should have known that. And it is — it is my fault at heart.”

“You’re the chandelier?” Letterman asked.

“I’m the — yeah,” Olbermann responded

Oh he also sued them for around $70 million, but nice guy that he is, settled for $50 million.

Olbie enjoyed his greatest success at MSNBC where he led that network on a hard leftward swerve that proved to be very good for ratings. However ESPN2 doesn’t need resurrecting, so it’s still hard to see the reasoning behind the ESPN re-hiring. I mean at this point MSNBC would probably benefit more from bringing him back.

At first it was reported that Olbermann wouldn’t be allowed to discuss politics on his new show. However, it is unrealistic to expect him to refrain from showing his liberal colors, considering one of the reasons he was fired from MSNBC was for giving money to political campaigns in an obvious breach of policy:

Msnbc TV host Keith Olbermann was suspended indefinitely on Friday for making campaign donations to three Democratic congressional candidates, apparently in violation of NBC News ethics policy.

The announcement came in a one-sentence statement from msnbc TV President Phil Griffin: “I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”

Now we are being told that politics would not be off limits for him, provided he’s “responsible”:

Skipper said while “politics and governance and elections are not going to be the subject of a show,” there is “no prohibition against speaking up when sports runs up against anything else in our culture.”

“Trayvon Martin is an excellent example; we expect Keith to have some point of view there. It only has to be responsible,” he said.

That statement alone could drop the over/under to around 10 months, since expecting Keith to be a responsible broadcaster is the very definition of irresponsibility.

I may also offer a parlay allowing you to pick who his eventual successor will be. At Current TV he was replaced by none other than Client Number 9 himself, Elliot Spitzer. Good odds will go to Jose Canseco, Dennis Rodman, Lance Armstrong and Pete Rose with Tonia Harding and Dorf being potential dark horses.

So place your bets and grab the popcorn.

BREAKING: the odds will definitely be affected should Nate Silver of the Five Thirty Eight blog choose to make a wager. The statistician, who is famous for his accurate predictions of the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, is now being reported to have inside information on the situation. And I’m sure he will have a field day with these patterns.