Will Compton explains how ‘Bussin’ With The Boys’ separated itself in a saturated podcast market

When it comes to ex-athletes hosting podcasts, the market is a saturated one. And many of them aren’t good.

One show, however, that has managed to separate itself from the competition both commercially and critically is Bussin’ With The Boys, which signed a reported $30 million sponsorship deal with FanDuel earlier this year after leaving Barstool Sports to go independent. In the months since, BWTB has only continued to grow, adding a college football-focused offering starring Josh Pate while also forming a partnership with ESPN.

Earlier this week, Will Compton joined Kevin Clark’s This Is Football podcast, where he was asked how his show avoided becoming just another ex-athlete podcast. And while there have obviously been several factors, the ex-NFL linebacker primarily pointed to his and Taylor Lewan’s ability to translate locker room camaraderie to their platform.

“The question we ask ourselves when doing any piece of content is how do we bring the locker room to life through our content or conversations and everything else?” Compton said. “Football is like the number one selfless team sport to where you are sacrificing everything for the logo on the side of your helmet and all the athletes have a helmet on most of the time where there’s nothing underneath the helmet… and a lot of times, guys aren’t giving a lot answers they really want to give because they’re in a locker room after a loss or after a practice and you kinda want to carry the status quo, carry the standard of the team.

“I think what we were able to solve is getting those conversations that happened in the locker room or in the sauna or at the cafeteria and kind of bring those to life with guys and kind of tell guys’ stories because everybody’s got something that made them who they are currently and there’s a lot of trial and tribulation that come with that.”

There are *so many* athlete podcasts and many of them are bad and don’t break through. So I put it to @_willcompton: how did you create a good one that did break through? His answer was great.

“The question we ask ourselves is ‘how do we bring the locker room to life?'” pic.twitter.com/zynJICKQvx

— Kevin Clark (@bykevinclark) October 7, 2025

Compton proceeded to explain that he approaches podcasting the same way he did his football career, both in terms of preparation and commitment. He also credited the promotion the podcast received during its time with Barstool, as well as the insights he learned while working with Dave Portnoy’s company.

As far as the commitment aspect, Clark recalled a story he heard from colleagues working with Draymond Green who were surprised to learn that the Golden State Warriors star wanted to record a show following a game he had been ejected from. That clearly struck a chord with Compton, who admitted that it was a “process” for him to learn how to podcast during uncomfortable moments.

“You have to train yourself, you have to be very uncomfortable looking stupid and kind of talk through those moments because eventually, pendulum’s gonna swing the other way,” he said. “And as long as you sit there and you can answer the noise and kind of help control the narrative a little bit and be comfortable doing that without giving too much on the inside of the whole team aspect, that’s why I feel like guys can have a lot of success.”