ESPN is reportedly planning a new college football show built around Josh Pate and Bussin' With The Boys co-hosts Will Compton and Taylor Lewan, airing Friday afternoons from college campuses, according to Front Office Sports' Ryan Glasspiegel.
The reported show would mark an expansion of ties ESPN has already built with all three hosts. Pate joined the network's Get Up rotation last year, as part of a broader push from content president Burke Magnus, who has said college football is under-covered on ESPN's talk programming relative to how many people actually watch the games. Compton and Lewan started appearing on ESPN's daytime lineup around the same time, following their decision to leave Barstool Sports for a presenting sponsorship with FanDuel.
Of course, the show, which sometimes originates from the same city as the next morning's College GameDay broadcast, also indicates ESPN is looking to further lean into a strategy where its top personalities are digital natives. Naturally, the comparisons will be made to Pat McAfee's own rise at the Worldwide Leader, given the trio's SEC Championship altcast debut on ESPN2 last December — an altcast built off the Field Pass template McAfee had already proven out several times over — and now a reported Friday show on top of it. If it feels like a coincidence, it isn't. It's more a barometer for what's possible when a network invests in an audience someone's already built, according to Pate.
"I think when you combine that… year-round college football being viable and then just sports media as a concept being presented in practice the way Pat has done it, I think that there is no ceiling on what you're allowed to do, what you're capable of doing," Pate told Front Office Sports in July.
What Pate, Lewan, and Compton are actually capable of doing won't be clear until games are being played this fall, when ESPN will have to find out whether a Friday show built around three podcast hosts can hold up against the machine it already runs on Saturdays, one anchored by College GameDay and, per Glasspiegel's reporting, the same site the new show would sometimes share. On a recent episode of Bussin' With The Boys, though, Pate and Lewan laid out a vision for the alleged concept and the specific gap in ESPN's Friday programming they think it can fill.
#sports #compton
The reported show would mark an expansion of ties ESPN has already built with all three hosts. Pate joined the network's Get Up rotation last year, as part of a broader push from content president Burke Magnus, who has said college football is under-covered on ESPN's talk programming relative to how many people actually watch the games. Compton and Lewan started appearing on ESPN's daytime lineup around the same time, following their decision to leave Barstool Sports for a presenting sponsorship with FanDuel.
Of course, the show, which sometimes originates from the same city as the next morning's College GameDay broadcast, also indicates ESPN is looking to further lean into a strategy where its top personalities are digital natives. Naturally, the comparisons will be made to Pat McAfee's own rise at the Worldwide Leader, given the trio's SEC Championship altcast debut on ESPN2 last December — an altcast built off the Field Pass template McAfee had already proven out several times over — and now a reported Friday show on top of it. If it feels like a coincidence, it isn't. It's more a barometer for what's possible when a network invests in an audience someone's already built, according to Pate.
"I think when you combine that… year-round college football being viable and then just sports media as a concept being presented in practice the way Pat has done it, I think that there is no ceiling on what you're allowed to do, what you're capable of doing," Pate told Front Office Sports in July.
What Pate, Lewan, and Compton are actually capable of doing won't be clear until games are being played this fall, when ESPN will have to find out whether a Friday show built around three podcast hosts can hold up against the machine it already runs on Saturdays, one anchored by College GameDay and, per Glasspiegel's reporting, the same site the new show would sometimes share. On a recent episode of Bussin' With The Boys, though, Pate and Lewan laid out a vision for the alleged concept and the specific gap in ESPN's Friday programming they think it can fill.
#sports #compton
3 months ago
