The longtime exec could not agree on a new contract with the network; he will be replaced by Mark Lazarus.

Dick Ebersol has resigned from NBC Sports. He will be replaced by Mark Lazarus, the president of the NBC Sports Cable Group.He could not agree on new contract terms, reports the New York Times. On Monday, he was spotted throwing a football around at NBC's upfront presentation.He has run NBC Sports since 1989, overseeing all the network's Olympic bids over the years.The move comes at a crucial time for NBC Sports as it mulls a bid for the 2014 and 2016 Olympics, and months after Comcast completed its takeover of NBC Universal.Sources at NBC Sports say there was immediately tension between Ebersol and Comcast executives, including Steve Burke, now CEO of NBC Universal. It was a difference in philosophies between Ebersol's free-spending ways and Comcast's priority that sports should not be a deep loss leader.He denied to the Times that he disagreed with the new management.Ebersol was named to run the NBC Sports Group in February, overseeing NBC Sports, the Golf Channel, Versus and Comcast's regional sports channels. He oversaw negoations for NBC and Versus' broadcast rights to the National Hockey League for $1.9 billion.Ebersol bid $2 billion for the 2010 and 2012 Olympics. The network lost $220 million on the 2010 Vancouver Games and is sure to also lose money on the 2012 Summer Games in London, which accounts for $1.2 billion of the total rights package. But Ebersol contends that in his two decades of dealing, that's the only time he's taken a bath."Those were the only times that we ever lost money," Ebersol told The Hollywood Reporter in April. "To some degree I overbid in 2003, and the marketplace was not quite reset post the economic crisis of late [2008 and 2009]."And NBC Universal, Burke has stressed the focus of fiscal responsibility. ("We are here to make money," he told Wall Street analysts last month when asked if NBCUni would bid on the 2014 and 2016 Olympics in Russian and Brazil.) But the Games have also been an integral part of NBC Sports portfolio for decades.As far as rights deals in general, Ebersol joked during the NHL press conference that he doesn't believe that he'll be "let out of the building unless I'm going to make money."Turning a profit on multibillion-dollar rights packages, he told THR, "is a mandate that I've lived with for a long time."