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Josh Pate has a five-to-ten-year plan for himself, and it looks a lot like the one Pat McAfee has already run.
In an interview with Front Office Sports, Pate was asked if McAfee’s setup at ESPN, where an independently owned show got folded into the network and turned into one of its biggest platforms, is the model he’s chasing.
“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,” he said. “The difference now is when you shake up that Coke bottle, that’s great and all, but you still got to twist the top. And when you have people, you know, like the folks we work with at ESPN willing to twist the top, well, then it’s up to you.”
ESPN signed Pate as a college football contributor before the 2025 season, and by January, Front Office Sports reported that network executives wanted to expand his role after just one season. ESPN’s Mike Foss told FOS at the time that the network wanted to “find a world where he’s a part of it” going forward, and sources indicated Pate was set up to make millions annually as his profile kept climbing. Part of the push, according to that report, traced back to ESPN president of content Burke Magnus feeling the network had long under-covered a sport that trails only the NFL in national ratings.
Pate’s path there looks nothing like McAfee’s, though. McAfee ran his show independently for years before ESPN bought all the way in and rebuilt chunks of its football coverage around him. Pate has done the opposite, spreading himself across as many partners as possible instead of picking one. He started Late Kick in Columbus, Georgia, took it to 247Sports in 2020, moved it to CBS Sports as Josh Pate’s College Football Show in 2024, then licensed it to On3 and Yahoo Sports in 2025 while also launching a separate show, The Locker Room: CFB, with Will Compton and Taylor Lewan under the Bussin’ With the Boys banner.
The ESPN contributor role got added on top of all of it, not built to replace any single piece. When a fan on X suggested in January that Pate could follow McAfee’s path while staying independent, Pate confirmed that was exactly the plan, replying that he had “zero plans to leave YouTube or change the show in any way.”
Pate is a regular now on Get Up, SportsCenter, First Take, and The Pat McAfee Show during football season, doing exactly what the network reportedly wanted more of. Whether ESPN eventually backs Pate with the kind of long-term money it committed to McAfee is still unclear. But going by how Pate is already talking about the relationship, he’s betting the network keeps twisting the top as long as he keeps the fizz rising.
“I don’t care how long I get to do this. You’ve always got to look back on this period. You look at Pat, namely, and you look at what a trailblazing few years this has been. What a game-changing few years this has been,” he said. “And then you look at yourself and say, all right, well, I’ve got an opportunity now. Like, what a shame if I drop the ball with my little portion in my little lane over here because there could be 50 people down the road that maybe benefit from what we do carrying the college football flag on a network like ESPN.”
The post Josh Pate has a Pat McAfee-sized vision for his own future at ESPN appeared first on Awful Announcing.
