SerpApi.Org
Cam Newton warns former athletes to create their own media platform or go “extinct” after he was fired from ESPN on Tuesday.
Newton was among the massive ESPN layoffs, which included multiple former professional athletes like Ryan Clark and Bart Scott.
Newton signed a multi-year extension with ESPN in August 2025 to expand his role on “First Take” but the pact didn’t even last a full year.
“If you don’t own your own platform, you’re going to get overlooked, bypassed and be extinct, just like dinosaurs,” Newton said Tuesday on his YouTube channel.
STAY UP TO DATE WITH THE LATEST NEWS BY SUBSCRIBING TO MORNING REPORT NEWSLETTER
Newton cited Emmanuel Acho’s experience getting fired from Fox Sports bbefore landing on his feet because of his show “Speakeasy.”
Newton, an 11-year NFL veteran, owns multiple podcasts including “4th&1,” a weekly sports show, and “Funky Fridays,” a lifestyle talk and relationships show, which he says he plans to keep doing.
The former Panther said he’s more passionate about his own shows than he was with ESPN because when you work for a big company, you are “trying to execute it how they want you to exist,” instead of being yourself.
Newton explained, though, that he enjoyed his time with ESPN and that it was almost like an internship because of how much he learned.
“You cannot, you will not, make me hate my experience with ESPN,” Newton said.
“I did not have that education. I am a former athlete that did not study journalism when I had the opportunity to study it. … So now when you see certain things and you analyze and you start to say like this is how production works, you’d be a fool not to take your notes.”
Newton added that ESPN made networking with some of the industry’s best incredibly easy.
He said he will keep in touch with a lot of his former coworkers, whether they were on-air talents like him or behind the camera.
The college football national champion with Auburn in 2010 admitted that he was not expecting to be fired, but knows “it’s the business.”
“The day that Matt Patricia and Bill Belichick released me from the New England Patriots was the day that nothing else could surprise me in business,” Newton said.
