Emmanuel Acho just scored a nice promotion at FS1, sliding into the anchor chair for the network’s new morning show The Facility in the slot previously occupied by Skip Bayless and Undisputed. And one sports media host believes it’s the perfect move for Acho, who has ratcheted up Bayless’ hot take stylings to another level.
Discussing the shuffle at FS1 Thursday, Meadowlark Media’s Dan Le Batard expressed his shock that Acho would be so comfortable being performative and exaggerative in the same manner as Bayless in order to rise quickly in sports media.
“Emmanuel Acho looks to me like the evolution of the take creature that I have not seen before, where it is very calculated for attention,” Le Batard said on The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. “And I know that Bayless spawned that originally and he’s the OG of that stuff. But to see it evolve in a young athlete who’s trying to get aggregated … he has a level of self-awareness in it that I think is surprising to me, to have it be that craven.”
Le Batard was clear not to directly criticize Acho, but more so the sports media machine. Le Batard believes the audience and executives now reward people like Acho who surgically cut through all the noise to deliver a take most likely to go viral.
“There are many people at the sports media trough. Everyone is making content, and content is being consumed everywhere,” Le Batard said. “And I have found … that the evolution of the take has put us in a place where Emmanuel Acho is like the new computer on how it is to talk to an audience saying twice as many words as need to be said, at least in part because you often have to fill two hours and you only have one hour’s worth of news. So everybody on these shows, everywhere in their life, me included, get too talkative because of the amount of time you’re asked to make content.”
Le Batard certainly can be talkative, and even his Le Batard Show milks the big topics for attention. There is hardly any shame in it anymore.
But Le Batard’s point appears to be that Acho appeared on FS1 in 2020, not yet 30 years old, already fully formed as an attention driver and hot take artist for FS1. The bump to mornings, where he will debate sports alongside LeSean McCoy, Chase Daniel and James Jones each morning opposite First Take on ESPN, is just the latest example of how quickly Acho has adjusted to life on sports television.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.