They fired him. Right after the telecast last Friday night. They told him to get out and stay out. They had no choice. It had to be done.

He had proven himself to be an unmitigated, unrestrained on-air racist. ESPN, its standards unimpeachable and inflexible, would have none of that.

So, Anish Shroff, immediately after calling the Army at UT-San Antonio game, was done. No trial, no applied context, no appeal. At 41, his sportscasting career was over. He has forever been branded a racist.

In the third quarter of that game, Army ran a surprise gadget play: Pitch to a halfback who began to sweep right, but then stopped to complete a long pass.

That’s when Shroff wrote his own professional obituary. He marveled at Army’s “guerrilla tactics.”

Firing squad to follow.

ESPN, you see, doesn’t distinguish “gorilla” from “guerrilla,” thus in a game that included many black players, he called them “gorillas.” Even if Shroff’s partner, analyst Andre Ware, a black man, didn’t sound the least bit offended, he, too, was a victim of Shroff’s inexcusable racist slur.

So long, Anish. You’re through.

Of course, none of the above happened, other than Shroff complimenting Army for its “guerrilla tactics.” Even a mild rebuke from ESPN would have been totally unwarranted, thus his firing was too preposterous — too unfathomably stupid — to even think possible.

Shroff had made a good, appropriate analogy.

By now, many readers know where I’m going with this. Again. That’s on me. And I’m good with that.

In 2017, during the Australian Open, longtime ESPN tennis analyst Doug Adler was fired for praising Venus Williams for putting the “guerilla effect on, charging” the net. Nike made a series of commercials in the 1990s starring Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi engaged in “guerrilla tennis” in the streets of New York City.

But in Adler’s case, a recklessly wrong New York Times stringer took to social media to condemn him for calling Williams, a black woman, “a gorilla.” It was an astoundingly out-of-nowhere bogus claim, but rather than ignore it or stand up for their guy, ESPN panicked. Fearing that the sacrosanct New York Times would follow the stringer’s absurd claim with a print version, it preemptively and summarily fired Adler as a racist.

Adler’s career, reputation and even health — he soon suffered a stress-related heart attack — were destroyed.

At 56, with no career evidence or context applied, he was a racist, a victim of ESPN’s powered-by-panic cowardice. Though Adler, a former college All-American, had annually volunteered to conduct tennis clinics for poor black kids in Washington, he was determined by timid and still unknown ESPN execs to be an unmitigated racist.

The Times, perhaps realizing its stringer’s claim was bogus, never followed up. In fact, it has allowed Adler, an innocent man, to suffer a life of ignominy without a word of responsibility or regret for helping to perpetuate an indisputable lie.

ESPN has stuck with its absurd cover story hoping it just goes away, though Shroff’s “guerrilla tactics” was, like Adler’s, a self-evident application of a useful expression. ESPN knows to take any punitive action against Shroff would be both overtly ridiculous and indefensibly wrong. But Adler? Let him rot.

What still can be undone — a public, liberating apology — persists as a matter of grotesque and inhumane unprincipled principle.

Venus Williams? The celebrated social-justice activist took a pass. It didn’t concern her, even if she could have saved Adler from such a hideous injustice. ESPN’s most noted tennis voices, including otherwise opinionated John McEnroe and Chris Evert? Not a word.

Bold and edgy Nike? Silence. The sports media? Too frightened to even mildly protest the injustice suffered by a man so wrongly accused of racism, thus hardly a peep.

But if you think I’ve grown tired of trying to free an innocent man from a cruel and unjust conviction, six years and counting, I’m not. I won’t. I can’t. What if that had happened to me? And in a world gone nuts …

Meanwhile the transparent double-standard justice system within ESPN persists.

Last year, football analyst Robert Griffin III slipped on the air while referencing critics of black Eagles QB Jalen Hurts, calling them “j–aboos.”

Know what happened to Griffin for something well worth ESPN’s action? Nothing. Know what happened to Adler for nothing? Everything.

We’re left to conclude that TV’s graphics departments are where network execs place their otherwise unemployable sons-in-law.

SNY on Thursday scrolled the college football news that Miami was playing “Wildcats.” As reader Alan Hirschberg wrote, could SNY have been more vague? There are numerous four-year colleges nicknamed the Wildcats. In this case, it wasn’t Kentucky, Arizona, Kansas State or Northwestern.

It was the Bethune-Cookman Wildcats. Of course.

For sheer, insulting gall, there is the Padres’ $350 million man Manny Machado. A talented but self-admitted laggard — running to first, he said, is “not my cup of tea” — he has long been a boastful, self-entitled, thin-skinned minimalist. Last week, he was accused of being a divisive force among teammates.

His response: “I know that I’ve gone above and beyond for everyone. I will always go above and beyond for everyone. I think everybody knows that. I go out there and I pour my heart and soul into a team. … Ultimately, I know what I bring to the team. I know what I’ve always brought to the team.”

Hey, Manny, we know that you know, that we know better. A lot better.

Under Roger Goodell, the Jets and Giants now play at the same time more often even when not playing each other. As Goodell said, “It’s all about our fans.”

Brian G., a reader from L.I., needs our help. He wants to know what Fox’s Mark Schlereth was talking about when, with the Cardinals up 7-0 Sunday, he said the following:

“The Giants need to put Arizona on the defensive side of the offense, right?”

Defensive side of the offense? That’s the kind of thing football analysts who talk too much say. TV is now loaded with them.

Adam Amin, Schlereth’s partner, screamed after every play as if he’d never before seen a completed pass.

In the third quarter, a short pass to Giants TE Darren Waller was described by Amin as “caught in space.” The two defenders who were right there to tackle him filled most of that space.

On CBS’s Raiders-Bills game, Hollerin’ Kevin Harlan hollered during and after every play, so much so that valuable analyst Trent Green had little room to speak. Harlan was too busy shouting to engage him.

With five minutes left and the Bills up 38-10, CBS stuck with the game until its long determined end. CBS simultaneously had more competitive games winding down — Chiefs-Jaguars, Chargers-Titans — to show. But perhaps there were still some prop bets to determine.