Kevin ‘KFC’ Clancy plotting ‘second act,’ new show at Barstool: ‘I want to be Barstool for life’

When KFC Radio, one of Barstool’s pioneering shows, called it quits late last year, it left Kevin Clancy without a clear next step at the company.

Clancy was one of the original faces of Barstool across its blog, livestreams, and podcasts, but has taken his time since the end of KFC Radio to take stock of the industry and plot what comes next. And while he acknowledged in an interview this week on The Awful Announcing Podcast that this latest inflection point in his career is “a little bit scary,” he hopes to never leave Barstool and feels optimistic that he has the resources and platform at the company to reinvent himself and remain relevant to the audience.

“KFC Radio just kind of ran its course. We did it for 15 years, we’ve pivoted, and kind of had new iterations of it,” he explained. “And when you’ve done that three or four times, there’s only so many times you can pivot. So that was a natural breaking point.”

But Clancy is careful not to end up on a path toward becoming the “dinosaurs” that Barstool used to taunt when it was on the come-up more than a decade ago.

“This is going to be an interesting spot for me,” he added. “I did take a little bit of a step back in the sense of, 15-year run, I think I deserve a little bit of time to just figure things out. But I think the industry has shifted greatly. I think there’s a lot of new hurdles to tackle. And I always think about when we were starting the blog, there were newspaper writers who just dug their heels in and refused to adapt and change. And we just blew right past them. We called them the dinosaurs. I’m very cognizant of, I don’t want to become the dinosaur in this era.

“So I’m always trying to stay ahead, stay (with) what’s next, and I think I’m just sort of biding my time until I do the next thing. But there’s no denying that my first wave of this was a little bit of luck, and kind of catching lightning in the bottle at the right time, and so now I’ve got to do it more by design in this second act. So there’s a lot of pressure in that and a little bit scary, but I’m pretty confident I can figure it out.”

Since winding down KFC Radio, Clancy has grown an impressive audience on Instagram with the moniker “One Minute Man,” where he gives a take on a viral internet story in a short Reel. The videos are effectively a classic Barstool repackaged into vertical video.

So while Clancy’s latest project has largely happened outside the confines of Barstool, he believes his original company is still the best place for him in the long term. Clancy told Awful Announcing that he plans to launch a new show and knows he can’t be idle too long, but also believes the sports media industry will increasingly value sharp short-form content as time goes on.

“I want to be Barstool for life,” he said.

“I do think I need to start a new show and really get back into, like, earning for the company and back in the spotlight. There’s a part of me, though, I feel like I do a pretty damn good job with my ‘One Minute Man’ and my short-form content. It doesn’t seem to get the same acknowledgment as having a top podcast or long-form. But I think that’s part of where the industry is going.

“Same way that when people weren’t really doing podcasts, I leaned into that, I’m hoping the next wave, if not already this current wave, is short-form video, and I think I do that pretty well. So part of me is like, ‘I gotta come up with what’s next,’ and there’s part of me that’s like, ‘I think I’m already doing what’s next,’ I just need it to be accepted and understood and appreciated.”