Brett McMurphy is in the middle of the biggest week of his professional career. The former ESPN college football reporter has grabbed headlines this week for his investigative report that lead to Ohio State placing head football coach Urban Meyer on paid administrative leave.
The whole story was reported for and published on McMurphy’s personal Facebook page. He is a guest on Richard Deitsch’s Sports Media podcast on The Athletic this week. The headline from their conversation has been McMurphy’s assertion that in 2018 you do not need the backing of a major media company to break a story.
“When I first got to ESPN five years ago I thought, man, I’m at ESPN, this is awesome, it’s unbelievable. Obviously it raised my profile nationally and all that stuff. But what I found out in the last 18 months is you can stay relevant on Facebook or Twitter if you’ve got good information…people are gonna find you. In a weird way, we don’t really need these giant media corporations because we can get our message out. I think you’re seeing this with a lot of athletes that, basically when they have any type of news, they just post it on their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, instead of going the traditional route of calling up a writer and having them break the story.”
McMurphy also described the reasons why and situation that lead to him posting such a long and well-researched story to Facebook.
“I was part of the mass layoffs at ESPN last April and I had 18 months left on my contract. So we had non-compete clauses in our contracts. What that means in simple terms is if I wanted to go work for another company I was free to but by doing so ESPN was no longer required to pay me the remainder of my contract. So to get paid the remainder of my contract…I could not work for a third-party. However, I was able to tweet on my personal Twitter account. Also put information on my personal Facebook account because that was not a third party.”
“So when I got laid off, I had a decision to make. You know, I could sit on my couch and eat lime Tostitos for the next 18 months, which I did a lot of anyway, and not work and hope I get a job in 18 months or I can continue to try to report news, break news, via Twitter or Facebook, and try to stay relevant. So when my contract is up in August of 2018, then hopefully I’ll be more attractive to be hired somewhere else. So basically that’s what I did. I said I’m gonna bust my ass and I’m gonna try to keep working.”
“I just figured the way the industry was, if I didn’t stay relevant or try to stay relevant, any value I had to a future employer 18 months ago would diminish greatly if I wasn’t doing anything for the following 18 months. So I kinda worked while I wasn’t working, if you will, and tried to stay relevant, and here we are.”
The story about former Ohio State WR coach Zach Smith and the domestic violence accusations made by his ex-wife is not the first major story McMurphy has broken exclusively for his social media followers. He was also the first to report that Mississippi State had hired Penn State offensive coordinator Joe Moorehead as its new head coach, that Scott Frost was leaving Central Florida for Nebraska, and that the NCAA was considering adding three new bowl games for the 2020 season.
Deitsch also asked McMurphy if he considered going to ESPN with the Ohio State story in hopes that it would find a larger audience that way.
“That didn’t cross my mind because by doing that I’d be telling them what story I had and then that would be a mistake cause then they would pursue it. And secondly, that’s not something that they would get a quick answer out of. I’d have to go through their legal department…Honestly I didn’t really think about it.”
“I didn’t have any thoughts of trying to sell this story to anybody. Certainly, I wasn’t paid. I didn’t pay Courtney Smith to talk to me or anything like that. I just said I’m gonna report this story and see what I can find out. I never would have envisioned it would have reached this point. Ultimately it started out that I heard there were some domestic violence issues with Zach Smith in his times at Florida. I did a couple simple public record requests. Got the information and then it’s been a marble down a mountain since then.”
The interview is absolutely fascinating. You can hear it here.
