Michael Wilbon’s recent appearance on the Awful Announcing Podcast made headlines when he asserted that Stephen A. Smith is “not a journalist anymore,” which earned a fiery response from Smith. Lost in the virality of that, however, was Wilbon’s more nuanced examination of the ESPN ecosystem as a whole — one he has occupied for decades.
“Bristol turned everybody in this profession into a silo,” the Pardon the Interruption co-host said. “Everybody’s a one-sport person. Do you think that [Adam Schefter] and [Adrian Wojnarowski], do you think they couldn’t report on everything? They could. These guys are great reporters. They can cover everything. ESPN turned it into one sport, all the time, 24/7; most of it’s transactional. That’s on ESPN.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Awful Announcing‘s Brandon Contes posed an increasingly difficult question to Wilbon: Who is the face of ESPN right now?
“Two of them most be [Mike Greenberg] and Stephen A., right? And Scott Van Pelt,” Wilbon said. “It depends on what you follow and what you cover. If you are transactional with the NFL, then it’s Schefty. Right? If you’re that way with baseball and you’re a baseball fanatic, even though we do very little baseball now, maybe it’s Buster Olney. Maybe it’s Jeff Passan. I think it’s what you identify with because we are siloed now in this business.”
“Again, ESPN brought that on itself, where you have this sort of division of labor that I hate,” Wilbon continued. “So, I’d say that those are the leading candidates for the face [of ESPN]. There can’t be one. I’d say that those three. We’re talking actively, not a Mount Rushmore, but we’re talking actively, it would be in some order, depending on the time of year as well, Greeny, Stephen A., and Scott Van Pelt.”
Why didn’t Wilbon list Pat McAfee, who is reportedly negotiating a contract extension that would pay him upwards of $60 million per year? Well, it’s pretty simple.
“I don’t consume Pat McAfee, so I don’t have a sense of it, and it’s new,” Wilbon said. “It is not in the world in which I am, and that’s just a matter of time. The other guys have been at ESPN a hell of a lot longer than Pat McAfee. Obviously, McAfee has his audience.
“I don’t look at ratings at all. I don’t. Have never done that. That’s part of not being a TV guy. So, I don’t know what McAfee’s core audience and who they are. I know he has one, and it goes on, and it’s beyond ESPN. I know that. And maybe he is, too, but for me, it’s those three guys at this point — in my house, with family members who watch. And my friends are of a certain demographic, a certain age, across racial lines, but still largely of a certain age. I think, with that, comes a certain identification for certain shows.”
ESPN lassoed The Pat McAfee Show in May 2023, and the daily sports talk show has aired live weekdays, though McAfee somehow feels even more ubiquitous than that. But Wilbon’s take is a good reminder that ubiquity within one audience (or algorithm) doesn’t guarantee ubiquity across the board. The zeitgeist isn’t what it used to be — a different beast altogether from when Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser pioneered televised sports debate with PTI.
About Megan Armstrong
Since first getting published as a student by the Kansas City Star in 2013, Megan Armstrong has gone wherever curiosity and stories have taken her, specializing in sports, media, music, and culture coverage. She also has an extensive background in interviewing and profiling public figures. Her work has appeared in Billboard, Boardroom, Bleacher Report, Esquire, GQ, GRAMMY.com, NYLON, Newsweek, Teen Vogue, The Hollywood Reporter, UPROXX, and elsewhere.