Now that’s a misdirection play!
Desperate to keep his clean-cut all-American image intact, Dan Marino told no one but his wife that he had sired a baby with a co-worker, paying the mistress hush money and keeping his CBS Sports bosses — and even his longtime lawyer-agent — in the dark for seven years, sources told The Post yesterday.
“Danny did, as difficult as it was, tell his wife in 2005, when this occurred,” said a source close to Marino, referring to Claire Marino, who has six children with the Hall of Famer.
Marino, who has been a pregame analyst for CBS’s “The NFL Today” since 2003, stunned his Tiffany Network bosses by informing them of the tryst and secret love child after The Post told him the story was about to break.
Ryan Miner / Splash News
SCRAMBLIN’: Adour DanMarino stomps around New Orleans yesterday amid news of a love child with ex-CBS staffer Donna Savattere.
He also kept his longtime lawyer-agent — who had negotiated his contracts with the Miami Dolphins and CBS for 30 years — in the dark about the bombshell deal that paid CBS Sports production assistant Donna Savattere millions of dollars and that was cut in 2005, the year their girl was born, a source close to the former quarterback said.
And during the seven long years that Marino kept the tawdry secret from the public and his superiors at CBS, he signed “numerous contracts” that kept him lucratively employed, the source noted.
“CBS was not involved in any way, shape or form back in 2005,” when Marino cut the deal with Savattere using another lawyer, the source said.
She bore him daughter Chloe in June of that year — four months after Marino was voted into the NFL’s Hall of Fame for a dazzling career in which he became the league’s all-time leading passer at the time of his 1999 retirement.
Marino confessed to CBS Sports about the baby scandal only on Wednesday — right after The Post told Marino it would be exposing the affair and love child, a source close to him said.
Wednesday was also the Marinos’ 28th wedding anniversary. “At that point, Danny went to CBS,” the source said.
A second source, one familiar with the situation within CBS, confirmed that account as “absolutely true.”
“The first they heard about it was Wednesday,” that source said.
Asked about that account, CBS Sports spokeswoman Jen Sabatelle said, “CBS Sports executives first learned of this yesterday.”
Marino, 51, then also informed his lawyer-agent, Marvin Demoff, of the deal, telling him he had employed other people to handle the payout to Savattere, now 44.
The Marino source said he believed Marino did not use Demoff to negotiate the payment agreement with Savattere or inform the lawyer of its existence because of “embarrassment” over his adultery and love child.
