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Until yesterday, I had no idea who Josh Pate, Will Compton and Taylor Lewan are. But I guarantee you than in less than 60 days I will.
As I frequently remind--as recently as last month–I have spent arguably more quality time with ESPN in my lifetime than anyone or anything else, including both of my exes. Thus you’d best believe the story that FRONT OFFICE SPORTS’ Ryan Glasspiegel dropped yesterday morning most def caught my eye:
ESPN is planning a new college football show with Josh Pate and Bussin’ With The Boys cohosts Will Compton and Taylor Lewan, sources told Front Office Sports.
The show will air on Friday afternoons and take place from college campuses, sometimes (but not always) from the site of College GameDay, sources said. It was not immediately known what the time slot for the program would be. An ESPN spokesperson declined to comment. Last year, Pate made regular appearances on ESPN’s Get Up throughout the football season. FOS previously reported that ESPN was looking to expand his role this upcoming football season, as the network’s president of content, Burke Magnus, has felt that college football has been under-covered on ESPN talk programming relative to the high ratings the games garner. Pate hosts his own multiplatform digital show, with partnerships with On3 and Yahoo Sports, and has more than 500,000 subscribers on YouTube.
This comes in the wake of an otherwise emotional week for Bristol, Inc. where yet another crop of names and faces more familiar to my generation were put out to pasture. PENNLIVE.COM’s Matt Connolly drew the short straw in being tasked to report on a couple of the more notable partings:
Legendary ESPN broadcaster Karl Ravech is reportedly being laid off after spending more than 30 years with the network. The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported Tuesday morning that Ravech is out at ESPN. Ravech joined the network in 1993. The news comes after former NFL star Ryan Clark was laid off by ESPN Monday afternoon.
Ravech has called MLB games, the College World Series, the Little League World Series, college basketball and more for ESPN. He has also hosted Baseball Tonight and worked as a SportsCenter anchor…Clark joined ESPN in 2015. He appeared regularly on Get UP, First Take, NFL Live, SportsCenter and other ESPN shows.
Both of these men were actually on ESPN’s air on Monday. Ravech called one of the network’s few remaining exclusive MLB broadcasts on Monday evening. while Clark was given his walking papers during his regularly scheduled appearance on NFL Live. But as hundreds of others far less famous and well compensated also came to learn earlier this week and this year, this is how Mickey Mouse regularly conducts business–with all of the sensitivity and emotional connectivity of a subway rat in pursuit of cold pizza.
The hue and cry about this was amplified to yet another level when Glasspiegel underscored his story a few of the remarks that Pate had recently shared with his boss Dan Roberts:
“You look at Pat (McAfee) namely, and you look at what a trailblazing few years this has been. What a game-changing few years this has been,” Pate told FOS. “And then you look at yourself and say, ‘All right, well, I’ve got an opportunity now.’ Like, what a shame if I drop the ball with my little portion in my little lane over here because there could be 50 people down the road that maybe benefit from what we do, carrying the college football flag on a network like ESPN.”
When one invokes the name McAfee these days, that’s a de facto announcement of “Game On!”. And it prompted this corollary story at roughly the same time that Glasspiegel’s dropped from ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’s Wesley Stenzel”
(S)ome online circles began to criticize the host of The Pat McAfee Show, who is reportedly negotiating a $60-million-per year contract with the network.
Fellow broadcaster J.J. Watt called out McAfee’s reported payday amid the layoffs during a conversation on Tuesday’s ep of The Pat McAfee Show. “Did they keep anybody, or is everybody fired to pay you? I’m trying to figure it out,” Watt said.
McAfee then responded to the speculation that his salary is affecting other ESPN personalities. “That is not funny. We do not like that,” McAfee said. “We do not appreciate that. That is the narrative, and I am certainly taking it on the shins. The boys and I are very proud of the work that we have done.”
As he should be. McAfee made his mark in the same way that Pate and his bros did without any help from folks like Magnus–building an outsized audience of subscribers and measurable monthly active users on YouTube. The BWTBers will continue to air outside the ESPN walled garden, as does McAfee. It’s a way for each to take advantage of what each other lacks–the reach of a global, branded platform and the potential to sucker onto it the sort of coveted bro demo that the fan base of the usual ESPN studio content lacks. It’s a Faustian pact, to be sure. But compared to a host of other efforts to program weekdays that have been attempted over the years McAfee’s actually delivered credible and certainly cost-effective key demo impressions. And it’s a model that Netflix and other streaming competitors are shamelessly and increasingly embracing to build out their own businesses in a manner that Wall Street has now glommed onto much like that pizza-hungry rat we mentioned above.
Marchand was moved enough yesterday to drop his own attempt to offer counsel to those lamenting these realities–himself included–which included the following seminal observations:
The reason fans care so much about the ESPN layoffs is the same reason they love their favorite teams and players. There is a lifelong emotional connection to the network…When familiar faces such as…Ravech…Clark and NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero are let go, as they were this week, it prompts all kinds of visceral reactions from fans…Though that trio received the headlines during ESPN’s latest round of layoffs, it is the loss of David Lloyd, Stephania Bell, NFL Network’s Charles Davis and a slew of NFL Network behind-the-scenes people that continues to strip the invincibility from the network once known as the “Worldwide Leader in Sports.”
Since its birth in 1979, there have been two ESPN eras. First came the pre-2013 era, when the place was Shangri-la, one of the greatest media businesses in history with its dual revenue streams of around 100 million subscribers and advertising that created a multibillion-dollar moat shielding it from the emerging digital realities that were attacking the rest of the media.. Now, there is the post-2013 era, when layoffs finally found their way to the once-impregnable Bristol, Conn., as cable subscribers have sunk into the 60 million range and with dreams that a new “Unlimited” direct-to-consumer app can reverse fortunes. Since 2013, this has resulted in earth-shaking layoffs in Bristol every couple of years, derailing careers for those who are cut and shattering nerves for those who survive.
It makes content like the THIS IS SPORTSCENTER series that we recently mused about all the more poignant. Eisen’s one of the chosen few from NFLN who got to remain employed; happily reconnecting with his ESPN roots to swap stories with many of his now-departed colleagues, a list that grew since it aired with the “retirement” of my college compatriot Linda Cohn. But do bear in mind that Eisen’s appeal to the current ESPN management was largely impacted by his own McAfee-like daily talk show that funneled through several different distribution partners and had built up a loyal audience of its own. And much like the arrangements with McAfee and Pate, Eisen’s shows continues to be available outside of ESPN.
To me, that’s the most sobering lesson from all of this. Eisen and his subjects, let alone the likes of Ravech and Lloyd, were personalities developed exclusively within the ESPN ecosystem. They were the faces of those endless promos with the same title that Eisen borrowed for his series that cemented the brand and the bond that Marchand waxed so nostalgically about. You cared about them BECAUSE of ESPN. In the cold, cruel , polarized and fiscally challenged world that we now exist in, today’s core demo connects with their talent IN SPITE of it.
Marchand’s “final note” puts an appropriate button on it all:
Post-2013, if you work for ESPN, you know earthquakes happen in Bristol. It is still a destination spot in sports media, but it has not been utopia for a long time…What gets rewarded is the individual over the company, with the reasoning in 2026 being it is the only way to break through in the crowded media environment.
Oh believe me, Andrew, I know that all too well myself. Look what I’m doing these days.
Until next time…