There may be nobody in sports media who is rising as fast and as far as Josh Pate. And now his meteoric ascent is taking him all the way to ESPN.
Pate has slowly and steadily built a reliable following as a college football podcast host and analyst. He’s owned the persona as the future commissioner of college football with his overall thoughts on the sport. And he has parlayed a successful run with CBS and 24/7 Sports into a tidal wave of media partnerships thanks to his personally owned podcast, Josh Pate’s College Football Show.
Just earlier this month Pate inked a deal with On3 to bring his podcast to their college football platform in partnership with Yahoo Sports, who picked up distribution rights. Then, Pate announced a partnership with another popular sports podcast in Bussin’ With the Boys for a new college football show.
If that wasn’t enough, Pate was revealed on Thursday morning’s edition of Get Up as ESPN’s newest college football contributor.
In a college football superlatives segment alongside current ESPN analyst Joey Galloway, Get Up host Mike Greenberg introduced Pate as, “Our brand new buddy Josh Pate, who is our new teammate here at ESPN talking college football.”
— Big TIme Sports Vids (@SuperSportsVids) August 21, 2025
Last year, Pate took ownership of his podcast from CBS Sports. And he’s built up an impressive following for an independent football show with 374,000 subscribers on YouTube in addition to hundreds of thousands of followers throughout various social media platforms.
It will be interesting to see how ESPN utilizes Josh Pate moving forward, as he can bring a more contemporary college football voice to a number of different shows across the network from their morning lineup to more dedicated college football properties. You can imagine given how far he has come in such little time, this ESPN role may only lead to even more opportunities in the very near future.
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