Colin Cowherd knows what it means to work for ESPN.
Before he joined Fox Sports in 2015, he had been an employee of the Worldwide Leader for 12 years. After starting as an ESPN Radio host, he leveraged his success with hot takes into various shows and appearances on ESPN TV networks, eventually co-hosting SportsNation on ESPN2 from 2009 to 2012.
While he wore a lot of hats during his ESPN days, Cowherd has essentially done one thing since coming over to FS1: hosting The Herd every afternoon.
According to the 61-year-old host and podcaster, he sees a parallel between how ESPN handles high-priced talent and the criticism that people like Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee have been getting in recent years.
“I think as a broadcaster, sometimes Fox really protects me, and I’m not joking. They put a fortress around me. Because they understand, three hours a day is a lot of talking,” Cowherd said while speaking with The Ringer’s Ryen Russillo on The Colin Cowherd Podcast. “And I’ve watched Stephen A. Smith, some of the criticism about him. In my take, he and McAfee bust their ass. They work really hard. McAfee has no days off in the football season.
“My take is most broadcasters, at some point, pick one or two things. You’ve picked NBA among yours. And NFL is mine. I go a mile deep on it, and everything else suffers a little bit. And you and I, 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.
“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 on a bunch of stuff.
“And so when I watch the NBA coverage and I think, The NBA is big enough. You should just do NBA, and that is your beat. Like, Windhorst is not doing baseball.”
Smith has been at the center of much criticism in recent months as ESPN’s highest-priced talent has been ubiquitous. Many viewers have tired of his yell-first, think-second broadcasting style, and there’s a sense that audiences are happy the NBA season is over, so they don’t have to see him for a while (although there are reports ESPN will incorporate him into NFL coverage, though it’s unclear who would want this).
McAfee, too, has been all over the place. Along with his weekday show, he’s a mainstay of College GameDay and appears on altcasts of significant events. While his style might be attracting eyeballs from coveted demographics, there’s also a lot of criticism from those who don’t enjoy the schtick.
Cowherd sees himself as a “generalist” and thinks there’s value in that, but it also means that he’s not the right person for marquee events where analysis and insight are needed. And that’s where ESPN goes wrong with people like Smith and McAfee.
“I’m a generalist, so nobody considers me an expert. 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,” said Cowherd. “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, 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. That’s what I think of them as. They’re the NFL guys.”
Cowherd has been in those situations, too, and he remembers feeling like he was sitting in someone else’s chair because he had a bigger name.
“I was on the NFL Draft for two years on radio. And again, I’m a pretty good talker. I kinda was like, ‘I shouldn’t be stealing somebody’s gig. I’m not going a mile deep.’ I mean, I read everything. I made calls, but I’m thinking, ‘This is not me. This is not what I am. I’m not good enough on this to do this.’
“As I’ve watched some of the criticism of people, and a lot of it’s been Steven A. And my takeaway is, man, I think in these marquee events, I think networks have to step in and just say, ‘You got to have specialists.’ It’s almost like in baseball. There’s literally the bullpen. There are set-up men, closers, and middle relievers.”
Cowherd has identified the rub when it comes to talent like Smith. You don’t pay him $100 million to do nothing during the NBA Draft. However, his presence on your draft coverage was, by all accounts, a net negative. It’s hard to believe they’d have the wherewithal to sideline Stephen A. during one of the significant NBA events, but as Cowherd puts it, imagine how much more enjoyable it would be for audiences if you swapped him out for someone who actually puts in the work and has something interesting to say.