ESPN will make its annual upfront presentation to advertisers Tuesday morning in a Broadway theater, four days after scripting the latest act in its relationship with Bill Simmons, if not its final one. Last Friday, John Skipper, ESPN’s president, effectively fired Simmons, one of the company’s best known employees and the founding editor of its Grantland website, by announcing that he would not renew his contract.

The message was clear: Regardless of your influence or the number of people who listen to your podcasts, no one is bigger than the brand.

Since Skipper’s Friday morning putsch, Simmons has remained publicly silent. His last message on Twitter, posted Friday morning, referred to the previous night’s edition of “The Grantland Basketball Hour.” He has gained about 200,000 followers since then, most of them waiting for his next post, preferably one that punches his bosses in the snout.

But do not expect Simmons to say anything, at least about his departure, until he and ESPN are legally done with each other. Talent contracts like Simmons’s typically contain nondisparagement clauses, so if Simmons strikes out angrily before negotiating his exit — if, say, he verbally slapped Skipper or ESPN — he would forfeit about a third of his estimated $5 million salary, based on just over four months left on his contract.