Colin Cowherd has been a member of FOX Sports since 2015 after working at ESPN for the previous 12 years, and he has evinced a dichotomy between the manner in which both companies utilize on-air talent. Cowherd feels that FOX has “put a fortress” around him and recognizes the sheer magnitude of talking for three hours a day, but he also has great respect for Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee for their work ethics appearing across ESPN and other platforms.
The takeaway he has, however, is that it is impossible to be the perfect parent that is great at their career with four kids who shows up to every recital and little-league game, meaning that most broadcasters at some point ultimately choose one or two things. Speaking to Ryen Russillo on The Colin Cowherd Podcast through The Volume, Cowherd acknowledged that he has selected the NFL and goes deep into the league.
“We both worked at ESPN, but I always felt the ideology of ESPN was, ‘If you make good money, we’re working you. We’re getting you on a lot of stuff,’” Cowherd said. “FOX interestingly is the opposite. Their thing is, ‘We’ll compensate you. We want you to be great on what you’re great at, but we’re not putting you on a bunch of stuff.’”
The conversation led into analysis about ESPN coverage of the NBA Draft and the need for the same broadcasters to appear on marquee programs, with Cowherd stating that ESPN senior NBA writer Brian Windhorst is not partaking in baseball coverage. Cowherd questioned if he was being a relic with this view, to which Russillo replied that he was not and recollected his daily schedule working for ESPN. Russilo explained that he discerned a need to prove himself all the time and felt like he owed the audience to be into what he was doing.
“I’m a generalist, so nobody considers me an expert, right?,” Cowherd said. “Like I’m not on the NBA Draft or the NFL Draft or the postseason baseball or the Indy 500 crew or the World Cup. I’m a generalist. I’m not on a network, tiffany marquee event, but as I watch the criticism for broadcasters that make mistakes on these events, my take is once you pay $11 billion for events as a network, like I don’t want to see Joe Buck and [Troy] Aikman. That’s what they do, they go a mile deep. They should have an offseason, and I don’t want to dilute them.”
Russillo remembered working in Boston and wondering why one person had a radio show, a nightly television program and was also doing pregame and postgame coverage. Thinking about why people cannot just have one job, he evinces that the industry has changed a lot and proceeded to ask people if they want the title or the job. Cowherd has appeared on coverage of the NFL Draft, and he thought to himself that he should not have been doing it or taking other people’s jobs. In observing the criticism of people on the ESPN coverage of the NBA Draft, he believes networks need to equip specialists for marquee events.
“It’s almost like in baseball, there’s literally the bullpen — there are setup men, closers and middle relievers — and I think if I ran it, like at The Volume, I have Daniel Cormier for one thing,” Cowherd said. “I don’t bleed my guys over at all. I want you to be a — [John] Middlekauff does golf and lives for it — but it’s like at The Volume, and I have much less of a budget, my whole thing is, ‘I’ll be a generalist, Nick Wright’s a generalist. Everybody else is a specialist,’ and I like it. When I go to a guy, I know exactly what he’s going to talk about.”
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