Ryen Russillo hosts one of the biggest sports podcasts in the United States for The Ringer after years hosting one of ESPN’s most popular sports talk radio shows. And while it’s impossible to “stick to sports” 100 percent of the time, Russillo clearly takes pride in being pretty laser-focused on sports analysis on his show.
Having worked through most of the Donald Trump administration at ESPN and a period under former company president John Skipper in which political and social commentary were commonplace on ESPN airwaves, Russillo saw a lot of different approaches.
In a conversation on The Colin Cowherd Podcast released Wednesday, Russillo explained why leaning into politics in sports talk is, in his view quite lazy and “self-serving.” (These comments came before the mass shooting event at the Kansas City Chiefs parade.)
“The out was, ‘hey even though you’re coming to me for sports, this is more important,'” Russillo said of the late-2010s at ESPN. “And I could never tell you that you’re wrong. I can’t say, ‘no you’re wrong this isn’t more important.’ But there’s a lot stuff that falls into the category that is far more important than whether or not Ben Roethlisberger has it this year and can win the (AFC) North. Like yeah, you win, I submit. But that’s not what I was f***ing hired to do.”
Of course, Russillo infamously was torched in the summer of 2020 following protests over the murder of George Floyd after he said on an episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast that many Americans “vote selfishly” and said rioting during the protests made them “no longer about George Floyd but about rare Jordans.” Russillo later apologized and has since indicated he sees no place for those conversations in sports content.
Speaking with Cowherd this week, Russillo explained his belief that talking heads who rely on social commentary are taking the easy way out and yearning for positive publicity.
“I’ve also kind of noticed that people who talk for a living kind of feel like they need to talk about everything,” Russillo said. “But I always felt like, ‘yeah I have some thoughts, and one of the few times I ever shared them, in some sectors I was getting destroyed.’ But whatever, that’s just the way it works.
“I just honestly felt like it was easier than watching a million f***ing games. I thought it became very self-serving. I thought the intention was good, but I would see it with people we worked with where I was like, are you doing this because it’s the right thing or are you doing this because it’s just f***ing way easier doing this than grinding and watching 20 hours of football in a weekend?”
Russillo did not use the word “lazy,” but it’s clear he feels he works harder covering sports than many of his contemporaries. Even among his fans, Russillo has a reputation for sometimes going overboard with his homework and research. His solo NBA segment “Tales From the Couch” plays up the hours he spends guzzling NBA film. And he is the rare sports host who thoroughly covers both college football and the NFL.
However, Russillo did admit even he (or the similarly sports-focused Cowherd) will get a dopamine hit from nailing a bigger-picture segment every so often.
“Every now and then you might do a societal observation take and then pivot into something else. And it would be a really killer monologue and those would usually do better for you than just a breakdown of something in sports,” Russillo said. “Because it stood out. It would get a little run. … I think what happened was depending on where you were aligned, you started seeing wins in content by pushing that more and more.”
Indeed, plenty of personalities in the industry derive their popularity from covering bigger-picture issues beyond sports. Many have used sports jobs as springboards into broader commentary.
At the same time, ESPN clearly pivoted away from those on-air conversations since Russillo and Cowherd left. But while the worldwide leader may prove Russillo’s thesis, many of the biggest sports shows today often riff on non-sports issues.
From The Pat McAfee Show to Nightcap to The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz, politics are certainly not prohibitive to popularity.
Russillo has an incredibly firm stance that may be impacted by the blowback he got for speaking his mind, but plenty of others balance sports talk with social commentary to extreme success.
[The Colin Cowherd Podcast on YouTube]
