Peter Schrager reportedly ESPN’s frontrunner for new 2 p.m. show

Peter Schrager’s first year at ESPN has gone well enough that the network is ready to give him his own show.

According to The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand, a program centered on Schrager is the leading candidate for ESPN’s 2 p.m. hour, which currently airs an edition of SportsCenter. The 5 p.m. slot — vacated when Around the Horn aired its final episode in May 2025 after nearly 23 years — has also been occupied by SportsCenter, which is putting up stronger numbers than ATH did in the same slot.

Schrager’s name has been connected to ESPN’s afternoon shakeup since nearly the moment Around the Horn was canceled last year. When CNBC’s Alex Sherman first reported that ESPN was considering replacing the 2 p.m. SportsCenter, he noted that the potential Schrager show would be an “all-sports” concept rather than another NFL-only hour. Marchand himself reported last spring the idea of Schrager doing a show at 2 or 5 p.m. was “pretty likely,” and that he could be “a central figure in some sort of ensemble” rather than a solo act.

A year later, that’s where things stand.

Schrager, 44, joined ESPN from NFL Network and Fox Sports last April, after nearly a decade as one of the faces of Good Morning Football. At ESPN, he quickly became a fixture across Get Up, First Take, NFL Live, and The Pat McAfee Show. He stole the show at McAfee’s NFL Draft Spectacular last spring and launched The Schrager Hour podcast with Omaha Productions in the fall. He also stepped in as a guest host for Mike Greenberg on Get Up, which gave ESPN executives the most confidence yet that he could anchor his own hour, according to Marchand.

Schrager has been candid about what he misses from NFL Network, specifically the three-hour daily runway on GMFB where he could spend eight minutes on whatever topic he felt like. His own show would give him something closer to that again.

The 5 p.m. picture is more complicated, and a lot of it comes down to Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon. The plan to keep SportsCenter there is tied directly to ESPN wanting Kornheiser, 77, and Wilbon, 67, to keep hosting PTI for as long as they want. Per Marchand, the network doesn’t want to touch the surrounding hour until they’re ready to step away, at which point the full 5-to-6 block would be reconsidered.

Expanding PTI to a full hour was the first idea that gained traction, with Marchand reporting in December 2024 that it was “at the forefront of discussions” inside Bristol, and from the outside, it made obvious sense. PTI is the gold standard of sports debate television, and Kornheiser and Wilbon remain as sharp as ever. But ESPN approached the pair about doubling their airtime without offering much of a raise, and unsurprisingly, no deal got done. Both hosts signed new contracts through 2028, and ESPN committed to keeping PTI going as long as they want, but at 30 minutes.

The more serious conversation that emerged last October centered on Scott Van Pelt moving from his late-night SportsCenter to the 5 p.m. slot. The network even tried to bring back Ryen Russillo to pair with SVP, given how popular their old SVP & Russillo ESPN Radio partnership from 2012-15 had been. Russillo had other plans — he moved to Barstool after leaving The Ringer — and Van Pelt has openly said he doesn’t want to do late-night SportsCenter forever, but the reality is that his show has become a genuine institution, keeping pace with traditional late-night television in the ratings and leaving ESPN with no obvious successor.

With SportsCenter putting up strong numbers at 5 p.m. in the meantime and Kornheiser and Wilbon signed through 2028, the urgency to force a change before they’re ready to step away has faded. Which brings everything back to Schrager, and the 2 p.m. show that has been waiting for him since he arrived in Bristol.