With 2024 finally here, a number of sports business minds are making their predictions for 2024. Michael McCarthy had six guesses for Front Office Sports. They included everything from a big fat raise for Stephen A. Smith to the NBA getting into bed with ESPN. But the prediction that really caught my eye had to do with Colin Cowherd.
McCarthy wrote that he expects ESPN to try and lure Cowherd back to Bristol. To McCarthy’s way of thinking, Cowherd instantly bolsters the ESPN Radio lineup and the show’s TV simulcast would fit right in with Get Up, First Take, and The Pat McAfee Show.
It makes sense on the surface. All the two sides would need to do is find the number that makes them both happy, right?
But does it really?
I thought about this a lot between the Panthers’ loss on Sunday and the kick-off of the Rose Bowl on Monday. Is it safe to assume that Cowherd would want to leave FOX, and if he does, can we assume doing the same thing for a different company would be his goal?
ESPN overhauled its radio product ahead of football season. Even with a new flagship morning show and new pairings across multiple dayparts, McCarthy reported that Disney did not feel like all of ESPN Radio’s problems were solved. In August, sources told him that the company brass viewed a reunion with Cowherd as the missing piece.
There’s no doubt in my mind that McCarthy is reporting exactly what he is told, but I do wonder if the belief that Cowherd could be an instant fix for the network was expressed as a plan or if it was a sort of “you know what would be real easy?” kind of thing that no one involved in the conversations actually considers realistic.
Colin Cowherd, love him or hate him, is authentic. Plenty of people in the sports radio world are driven by being the smartest or the most famous. If you’ve ever seen Cowherd speak at past BSM Summits, you know that he is driven by curiosity. He wants to be interesting and more importantly, he wants to be interested.
He will turn 60 years old this week. His name has been pretty ubiquitous at the top of the BSM Top 20 National Sports Radio Shows since it began. Leaving FOX to start all over again, even if it is a return to somewhere he knows well, would require a serious commitment. Is signing a deal to do sports radio for another seven to ten years really interesting to Cowherd at this point?
Colin Cowherd launched The Volume almost three years ago. He didn’t do it just because he thought digital media was a neat experiment. He went out and recruited stars like Shannon Sharpe, Draymond Green and Richard Sherman who could attract an audience. He added rising stars like Jon Middlekauff, T-Bob Hebert and Jason Timpf. He found social stars like Jenkins & Jones and put the promotional power of iHeartMedia behind them.
The Volume isn’t an experiment. The Volume is an investment in Cowherd’s future and the future of Cowherd’s business. He may sell a stake in the company, but given the public and private conversations I have been privy to, it’s hard to imagine him compromising the company in any way to return to ESPN.
Now, perhaps ESPN is motivated to do the kind of deal with Cowherd that it did with Pat McAfee, where the host still owns the content and his show, but it is licensed to the network with some programming compromises.
But why would it be? McAfee gets paid a whole lot of money and, while the relationship has not been fraught, it hasn’t always been smooth either. As Disney eyes ESPN’s future as an over-the-top streaming service independent of cable, I can’t imagine the company wants to pay big money for more people and products that are not exclusive to its airwaves.
Besides, it is worth circling back on the fact that ESPN does already have that deal with McAfee. It might be easier to re-work the deal to include licensing the show to ESPN Radio as well instead of working on a separate deal with Cowherd. Just because they couldn’t get it done the first time doesn’t mean it can never happen. McAfee’s audience is younger and as brand-loyal as any we’ve seen in sports media.
I get the appeal of a reunion between Colin Cowherd and ESPN. It would be big news while also being very comfortable for the sports media universe, but Colin Cowherd didn’t make his name by always doing what is comfortable.
The Colin Cowherd I have followed for the last couple of decades seems way more likely to re-define his show than to return it to ESPN Radio.
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
