ESPN Radio is on life support following the latest round of company layoffs. Keyshawn, JWill, and Max are gone. Former hosts have mourned the situation. It appeared as though Pat McAfee might be the solution to ESPN’s radio problems but that’s not going to happen for now.
There’s a giant opportunity for the right person to swoop in and save ESPN Radio. According to a new report, that person might be Colin Cowherd.
Front Office Sports’ Michael McCarthy reported Tuesday that “ESPN is very interested in a reunion” with Cowherd when his Fox Sports contract expires in 2025 in spite of how their relationship ended.
“The monster negotiation coming up for Fox is Colin,” a source told McCarthy. “His ratings are at an all-time high. And he causes zero issues — unlike Skip Bayless.”
Cowherd spent ten years with the Worldwide Leader before jumping to Fox Sports in 2015. For all of his faults and critics, he’s found relative success with his FS1 and Fox Sports Radio show, not to mention his growing “The Volume” podcast network.
The radio host admitted in June that he has been approached by ESPN at times over the past eight years, but he hasn’t been interested.
“10 years is a lot to do the ESPN treadmill, the car wash,” Cowherd told the New York Post reporter Andrew Marchand. “I enjoyed it. I hopefully don’t have any enemies there, I really enjoyed it. They circled back a few years later and came after me and I said, ‘I really appreciate it, but I’m part of a new family.’ But it wasn’t for any other reason than my wife and I, we wanted new adventures.”
“They’ve reached out since,” Cowherd added of ESPN. “I’m at a different place in my life. They’ve done a great job, I’m happy where I am…I love The Volume, I love my team. They’re great. We’re pretty low maintenance. We come in, we prep, we have breakfast, I put on makeup, we do the show, we go home, I’m out the door two minutes after the show is done. I don’t need anybody to hold my hand, I’ve been doing this a long time.”
While not named, it is assumed that the former senior vice president of ESPN Audio Traug Keller was the one who tried to woo Cowherd back. He often opined how he regretted letting him go. However, Keller is no longer with ESPN, so whatever personal interest he had in a reunion is moot.
While it doesn’t sound like there’s too much interest from Cowherd in returning to ESPN, McCarthy’s sources think the juice would be worth the squeeze for the company.
“Why wouldn’t ESPN go huge for Cowherd? He’d solve the ESPN Radio problem in one stroke,” a source told McCarthy.
Cowherd has admitted that he wants to grow old and “die on the air,” so if ESPN were to throw Pat McAfee money at him in a few years, anything still seems possible.
