ESPN reportedly launching college football show with Josh Pate, ‘Bussin’ With The Boys’

ESPN is looking to expand its partnerships with two prominent independent creators.

According to a report by Ryan Glasspiegel in Front Office Sports, ESPN is planning to launch a college football show starring Josh Pate alongside Will Compton and Taylor Lewan, co-hosts of the popular Bussin’ With The Boys podcast. The show is slated to air on Fridays during the college football season from college campuses across the country. Per Glasspiegel, the show will “sometimes” emanate from the same location as College GameDay the following morning, while it will sometimes shoot from a different location. It is unclear what time the show will air each Friday.

The show marks an expansion of ESPN’s partnership with both Pate and the Bussin‘ duo. Last year, Pate began making regular appearances on Get Up to talk college football. Compton and Lewan would similarly appear across ESPN’s daytime lineup throughout football season.

Of course, the show also indicates ESPN is looking to further lean into a strategy where its top personalities are digital natives. Pate has amassed a huge following on YouTube, becoming one of the most-watched college football creators on the internet. Compton and Lewan, two former NFL players, started their media careers at Barstool Sports before moving their podcast independent.

Glasspiegel notes that the show comes at a time when ESPN content president Burke Magnus has expressed feelings that his network under-covers college football relative to the size of the television audience that games attract. By viewership, college football is the second-most-popular sport in the country behind only the NFL.

Considering the built-in audiences that Pate, Compton, and Lewan all bring to the table, it’s a sensible decision by ESPN to give them their own show. And with the program set to travel to the site of College GameDay on occasion, the possibility opens up to involve the trio in the network’s flagship college football pregame show if ESPN chose to do so.