The Josh Innes Show - ESPN's Standards

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

I read a column from John Mamola from Barrett Media. The gist of this article is that ESPN has allowed its standards to erode in the name of gaining ratings and revenue from Pat McAfee. First off, I appreciate that he actually wrote a media story with an actual point of view. Second, I'll explain why McAfee is just a produce of what ESPN allowed itself to become. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, I read a lot of shit when I'm trying to find things to talk about on the podcast. You know, I scroll through different stories and sometimes I bitch about the content on these websites, which is totally normal because that's kind of what you do whenever you're doing a talk show or a podcast, particularly one when you are by yourself and you don't have a counterpoint to all of your arguments, so you look for something to argue. Hey, look, I've explained talk radio to you. That was easy. And so I'll go to USA Today or I'll go to ESPN or I'll go to various different sites. I'll look on Twitter. I'll look on Instagram. A lot of the shit I think to talk about is just shit I'm thinking about over the course of the day or something that pops up randomly. And some people will send me messages and they'll say, why do you always find shit to yell about? Because I need something. Otherwise,

I'm just sitting here pulling my pud doing nothing. I'm in a weird stage in life because back when I was doing full-time sports radio in a city, I followed that city so closely that it was easy to find shit to talk about. Well, I'm not on the radio in Houston anymore, so I don't watch every game and pay that much attention to what goes on in those sporting events. Same in Philadelphia. Now, football, I pay attention to that all the time because I genuinely like football and I genuinely like college football and I genuinely like betting on football. But I have a hard time sitting around giving a shit about what happens day to day in baseball games or basketball games. And I think a lot of people operate in that world. Like, I'll pay half attention to it. But again, those games don't matter as much. We've discussed that many times. A baseball game in April really doesn't mean a ton. A basketball game in November really doesn't mean a ton, you know? So I just have a hard time locking in. I don't know if it's because I'm older. I don't know if it's because I'm not doing it every day. I don't know what the reason is. All I know is I can't get myself to do that.

Football, I'll watch a fucking Mac football game on a Tuesday and have no problem with it. I'm a football guy. I like these other sports. I watched the Grizzlies game last night. Hey, they kept it within 51 this time, so good for them. But like certain things, I just have a hard time paying attention to. But I tell you all that to tell you this. I go to a bunch of websites where I try to find stories that have a point that I disagree with. So I have the counterpoint to that story. Now you know the rest of the story. And one place that I find this a lot

is a website called Barrett Sports Media, or Barrett Media is now what it's called. Guy used to be a program director. Now he's a consultant for sports radio. He's got a whole empire that he's built with former program directors and former media people and former hosts and former people that write stories. Some of them write actual columns. Many of them offer very little insight. I'm not saying this to take a shot, but if you're going to have a website that's based on, you know, being critical of media, then write some critical shit, write some shit with some opinion in it, write some shit with advice. And I don't feel like that's what I get because I feel like a lot of those people are kind of just writing for this to pass the time until they find their next job

and they don't want to piss off somebody that might give them their next job. Again, I'm not really judging you for that because I understand that you'd like to have a job. Your career is not going to be writing articles for Jason Barrett's website. So I understand that. But if you're going to sit here and be critical and offer critical opinions or offer insights on media, give me something with a little bit of teeth. Give me something where I'm like, oh, I didn't think of that. This person really was scathing in this article. This is like, it's mostly fluff. Most of it is either copy and paste press release stuff. You'll get a press

release like blank radio station science hammer in the t-bone to an extension in morning drive and then you'll copy and paste that maybe add one little nugget on your own like in the latest barrett media rankings they were 12th among talk shows in the top 20 or something like that the vast majority of the stuff on there is just copy and pasted press release type stuff. Or, hey, we saw this story on this site. We're going to link you to this story and then add our own little bit to it. But it's not like these people are writing scathing articles about radio and critical radio stories, right? You're not getting a ton of that. That's why when I read something today on that

website, I actually appreciated it because it was fairly scathing. And you don't get that very often, so I want to give credit to the person who wrote this story. And it's a story about Pat McAfee. Now, I'm not going to go deep down a wormhole on talking about how I think Pat McAfee is treated unfairly or anything like that. I've done that already. And I don't particularly like McAfee's show. Jilly loves McAfee's show. It doesn't do anything for me really. And I think part of it is because I'm watching this and this is going to sound self-serving and arrogant, but I watch this and I go, that's the same kind of shit I used to do on the radio. You know what I'm saying? Like he's got the dude in the Hulk Hogan costume doing like Hulk Hogan, but it's basically that Hulk Hogan is racist and shit. And I'm like,

this is the same kind of character shit we used to do. I didn't wear a costume or anything, but that's the same kind of shit we used to do. So when I watched this and Jilly's laughing, I'm like, you know that I used to do this shit. I used to do character, like the exaggerated characters. Howard Stern used to do the exaggerated characters, like with Billy West doing Marge shot. Like that's nothing new. Um, but she's like, yeah, but then you used to be funny. I'm like, yeah, I guess I used to be, but I used to have bigger balls than I do now, I guess, you know, but all that said, I don't hate McAfee. I admire what he's built. I kind of liked that. He's kind of double burdened everybody. Cause that's kicking it old school.

That's throwing it back to what media radio and everything used to be was oh you don't like me fuck you and you don't get a lot of that anymore because people are just desperate to be liked and they don't want to get canceled and to a degree I get it it's a different world it used to be we admired people who said fuck the system and fuck the man we used to admire the anti-hero we used to admire the nwo and opie and Opie and Anthony and Howard Stern and all these people that were F you to the FCC and the man. Now a lot of the audience consuming is the man. Even the young people are the man. That's what we are now. But I'm going to read you this story. I'm not going to do this from a place of wanting to overly defend Pat McAfee, but more so

it's about ESPN and their standards. That's what this story is written about is basically how far is too far story. How can Pat McAfee get away with all this and how much more will ESPN tolerate? And I've got a bigger picture thing about ESPN to discuss on that. But first, let's play a few commercials. All right, if you're ready to win some real cash during the basketball playoffs, you got to check out Pick 6 from DraftKings. When it comes to basketball payouts, DraftKings Pick 6 posterizes the competition,

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All right, so the headline reads, the ESPN Pat McAfee question, when is enough enough? The real question is how far ESPN will be willing to go in the name of audience expansion and revenue at the risk of alienating standards at the worldwide leader that's by John Momola who used to be a program director in Tampa I believe and I don't know him I have nothing against him I've never spoken with him but I'm going to give him some respect here and the respect I'm going to give him is that he's actually writing something that he has an opinion on and a hard opinion on, presumably. At least he's got a point of view. My problem is a lot of these media stories you see on these kind of websites is these people

don't have a point of view. I like this. So I'm going to read this. When is enough enough? That's a constant question that every programmer and executive from small town radio to big media conglomerates like ESPN must weigh when dealing with any level of talent on their roster. The answer is never the same because the circumstances are always different. Well, I will tell you this. To the initial point of this, which was how far is ESPN willing to go in the name of audience expansion and revenue at the risk of alienating the standards of the worldwide leader? Really, I don't even have to read the rest of the story about this. I can do a whole show based on that. Tell me what ESPN standards are. Because when I was a kid, ESPN used to be a place that you'd have SportsCenter,

you'd have Baseball Tonight, you'd have NFL Primetime, you would have Sunday Night Baseball, you might have Wednesday Night Baseball, and you would have Up Close, and you'd have Outside the Lines, and you would have these kind of shows that were not built around people yelling at each other constantly, right? So if you want to go to the, well, let me rewind a little bit more and answer one question about how far radio stations are willing to go in the name of audience expansion and revenue. All right. As someone who's lived it before, I got away with doing a lot of dumb shit in Philadelphia when we were number one. Whenever we weren't number one anymore, it became a lot easier to dump me. So the answer is people will put up with a lot of bullshit if the audience is going up and the revenue is going up. That's

factual, right? In St. Louis, I was doing a bunch of shit that I audience is going up and the revenue is going up. That's factual, right? In St. Louis, I was doing a bunch of shit that I thought was pretty funny. Revenue wasn't going up. They told me to fuck off. Like that's the way this works. That's the way the industry works. So like, I think it's kind of sanctimonious and disingenuous. And again, I don't know John Mimola. Maybe he'll hear this. Maybe he won't. But I think it's disingenuous and a bit sanctimonious to say things like, what will they be willing to do in the name of audience expansion and revenue at the risk of alienating standards? A lot of people are willing to do a lot of shit to alienate or to disregard standards if it means they're making money. Because ultimately, that's the name of the game.

The name of the game is make money, draw audience, get the audience, get the revenue. Everybody gets rich. There are no real standards. If we want to operate in a world of standards, what are the standards? You know, the standards for what sports talk radio was 25 years ago is not what they are now. Sport like here's the standards for sports talk radio now you put a bunch of joe blows on the air mostly white dudes they yell about inane topics for four hours they do nothing overly entertaining but that's the standard used to be different now when sports talk radio started it used to be like a newspaper on the radio some guy would get up there and just read you facts and take phone calls like the standards vary but let's look at ESPN. Like I don't even

need to read the rest of the story and I'll give him a mole of credit. Again, I don't know the guy, but he wrote a whole thing where he breaks down all the bad shit that Pat McAfee has done, to which I would respond to him and say, you know, what about Stephen A. Smith wanting to fight people? What about like, like I would argue that Pat McAfee and what he's doing on ESPN right now is a product of what ESPN did to put itself in the position where a Pat McAfee could produce and be powerful. What did ESPN do? ESPN sometime, back to our initial point of baseball tonight. You know what? There ain't going to be baseball tonight anymore.

There's no Sunday night baseball. They don't have a baseball package there when I was a kid ESPN the analysts would come on you'd you'd have the back and forths on SportsCenter you saw the highlights of the games on SportsCenter and I'm not trying to wax poetic about how great it was because if you look back at what ESPN was in like 1995 and everybody blows Stuart Scott and they blow Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann. They were literally just jamokes. They're making weird noises over highlights. Like, one way downtown, bang. Like, it was nothing compelling.

But I think the reason people look back on it so happily and they look back on it so fawningly, if you will, is they do so because they associate it with their childhood or their youth in a bygone era, but they also associate it with not having anything forced upon them that they didn't want. It was just sports shit. And obviously just like MTV had to evolve to include TV shows that weren't just music video shows, you had to have real world and road rules and singled out. And, you know, they did all that shit and eventually like ridiculousness which

airs 400 times a day i like there are not enough hours in the day for them to air the number of ridiculous with rob deer deck shows this dude's a billionaire based on this by the way it's bonkers but my point being is somewhere along the way espn got into the business of debate where debate was important so you started getting like the ones that were kind of lighthearted debate things like the OG debate show on ESPN, I guess. Well, really, like the sports reporters would be that. But that's like real white bread shit and old school shit. I'm talking about when you got PTI and you had two dudes, newspaper guys yelling at each other. But it was it never seemed

like it was angry. It never seemed like they were reaching for topics that were bullshit. It never seemed redundant. It was just a solid show. But then you get around the horn, which ended this year, is ending this year. And that changed the way the game was. It went from what ESPN used to be, which again, I'm bringing this up because of standards. In this story from John Mimola, we talk about standards. What are the standards for ESPN? The standard used to be the Entertainment Sports Programming Network. The problem is over the last decade and a half to two decades, ESPN has become about debate.

Embrace debate. That was the whole thing. They felt that dudes yelling at each other and now ladies yelling at each other over sports shit was compelling. And to a degree, they're not wrong because what gets the most engagement on social media, hot takes and people fucking yelling at each other, not really skilled orators, just people yelling and probably making up opinions to get people riled up. And that's what they do. That's the standard. So, and then also somewhere around the early 2010s, when you started getting ESPN deciding to work itself into a more political world. Now you might say, well, Josh, this is low hanging fruit. Oh, you're one

of those guys. It's going to talk about how ESPN went woke. Well, it's important to talk about that because that's how we got to Pat McAfee now. Standards, right? Let's circle the standards. Remember, the standard for ESPN, at least in my eyes, used to be you had SportsCenter, you had Baseball Tonight, you had ESPN 2, you had your sporting events, you had Big Monday, you had the college, you had College Game Day, you had all this shit, but you kind of knew what you were getting out of ESPN. And that was the standard. Then somewhere along the way, you went from, Hey, here's, you know, Keith Olbermann and here's Dan Patrick and here's

Susie Colbert. And here's all these other guys to get into a world where the analysts and not necessarily even the analysts, but like the hot take makers, those guys became the stars of ESPN. And then you realize that, boy, let's start getting into the money of discussing social political topics. So you start talking about the shooting of Michael Brown and St. Louis, and then you get a hard on because you get to see like, oh my God, the players are going out with their hands up. So now like during the Rams game, so now we get to see like, oh my God, the players are going out with their hands up. So now like during the Rams game. So now we get to go and we get to discuss that. Like basically what it really comes down to is you get these guys that come out and you get all these, these media dweebs and these media dweebs who are tired of being in the

toy department. The sports has always been the toy department. I used to talk with Barry Warner in Houston and he would say, Josh Savant, the sports has always been the toy department I used to talk with Barry Warner in Houston and he would say Josh Savant the sports section is the toy department of the media and a lot of those guys got sick of that they got sick of seeing the foxes and the CNNs and everybody get to get to talk about those things and be important and then they all kind of weaseled their way in and turned ESPN into Fox and CNN and And that turned a lot of people off. The standard did not change with fucking Pat McAfee. And don't tell me that the standard for ESPN changed with Pat McAfee. The standard for ESPN changed somewhere in the mid 2000s, early

2010s, when ESPN decided that ESPN was going to get in bed with social issues. And once it got into bed with hammering the Kaepernick stories and hammering the Tebow stories, and hammering, like, when it started hammering these types of things constantly, and that became the talking points because the people on ESPN got tired of being in the toy department. They wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein. Then ESPN's standards changed. And then what happened along the way is ESPN lost audience and people lost interest in ESPN because they didn't want to be hit over the head with it and it's not just because it was a black thing or a white thing it's because if people want to see that they'll go to Fox News or CNN they did not want ESPN to be turned into Fox

News or CNN and that is what ESPN became for years and years and years. So the standard changed. And just like anything happens over the course of time, over the course of time, the sensibilities of people change, right? The reason why there was a place for a Howard Stern in the mid 80s to the late 90s is because of Reagan and everything. And the sensibilities of people changed to the point where they were looking for someone to, they wanted to say, fuck the man, right? That's usually how these things go. People get tired of the man and it's cyclical. That's why, you know, you would have rock music in the 50s and 60s. You'd have punk rock. There was a type of filmmaking in the 1970s that took over after the 60s was kind of

whatever. The 70s came in and you started getting more taxi drivers and midnight cowboys, shit like that, or Easy Rider. You would start getting shit that was more like that, more of a more dirtier type of movie, not as glamorous. Then the 80s came around, the pendulum swung back. So the pendulum swings and swings and swings. So what happened is ESPN became Fox News, CNN, whatever. And that paved the way for people like Clay Travis and others and their websites to create a world where they talked about how terrible ESPN was now. And that built a gigantic audience of people that were like, fuck this shit. You're absolutely right. I'm tired of

your politics. And this is bullshit. We want our old ESPN back. So what happens is ESPN starts seeing that the numbers go down and ESPN is tired of hearing about this shit. So they're in a position where they now have to try to counter program all they've done for the last decade of, you know, putting the the Jamel Hills on SportsCenter type of shit they were doing and the moves that backfired on them in the name of trying to appease that mob. Now they're trying to appease a new mob. And the new mob is the people that were tired of seeing all the shit that ESPN had become. So they completely swing the pendulum to bro and like getting hammered on the air and saying, fuck this. And Paul Heyman saying, dude should be deported.

And Aaron Rodgers saying this. That's where you are now. The reason why Pat McAfee has an audience on ESPN and the reason why Pat McAfee is doing what he's doing now and the reason why you paid him $17 million is because you let the standards, as you put it, as John put it in a story, the standards, how far we go with the standards. And I don't know exactly what he means by standards. I don't know if he means a language standard, like, you know, people saying curse words and shit on ESPN, right? And I'll be honest with you, and this is going to sound soft, I would agree that ESPN is

not the place where you go to really see that type of shit. But ESPN allowed itself to become this talking head yelling about everything from social to politics to sports, and that's what it is. And because they allowed themselves to become that, and they let the standard erode. Like if you want to tell me about standards, like no offense to Stephen A. Smith, I'm fine with him making $10 million. Stephen A. Smith goes out and does what he does. And I respect that. I respect that he's found a place for him. But what standards is Stephen A. Smith adhering to other than he doesn't say fuck on TV?

He gets on TV and says some of the dumbest shit he's finding himself apologizing for shit seemingly as frequently as other people are now like the other day didn't uh I'm trying to think no that was uh I'm trying to think there was a thing didn't he apologize for something recently I don't remember but the point being in all of this is guys like that now get on TV and just say dumb shit. And now he wants to go out and try to fight LeBron. He's like, I'll kick LeBron's ass. Like the standard doesn't, there is no standard. So here's what, and this is the advice that I would give to ESPN. It's the advice I would give to CNN because I don't think Fox is fixable. Fox is what it is. But CNN used to at

least have a credibility as a network that I think like you'd walk in the airport and there's CNN and you kind of felt like it was fair, right? And they're never going to do this on either one of these networks because there's too much money involved. To your point, John, about the name of revenue and audience growth, they're never just going to become a news channel. That's why they have ESPN News or whatever does that even exist anymore but like CNN and ESPN should both get rid of all of their panel shows all of that shit you want to save money stop paying Kendrick Perkins to say stupid shit and just go straight up like you do SportsCenter you just go straight up and get out of the opinion business you want to give some opinions on SportsCenter in that little window of two minutes sure stop giving people four fucking hours to sit around on TV saying dumb shit.

Now, you may not make as much money, but that's the risk. CNN should get all out of all the opinion business and just go news 24 hours a day. May not make as much money, but then again, you shouldn't make money off of news because the news should not be bought and paid for, but that's another debate. But so to the point about McAfee, and John, I appreciate that you wrote the story, and maybe you'll hear this, maybe you won't, but Pat McAfee exists because ESPN allowed itself and its standards to erode to the point that they alienated so many people that now you have this. Now, maybe your argument is in the standards category is literally just, you know, the F-bombs

and the wacky shit and the Jimmy Kimmel shit. And if that's the point, I read the story, but I believe, and this is where I would counter your point. My counter is that ESPN allowed its standards to erode a long time ago. And they changed who they are. And that's fine. They wanted to get into the opinion business, get into the opinion business. You want to get into the politics business, get into that. is because you alienated so many people in the name of doing whatever the fuck it was you were doing from about 2010 to 2022 or whatever it was you made that decision now some people might argue

and say oh josh doesn't like the woke shit that ain't that ain't about what it is like because remember they spent a fuck ton of time on tim tebow and it wasn't because tim tebow wasn't the football it's because tim tebow was super religious he took a knee in the end zone and he's a white dude so the stories would bounce from that to like so they did that and now what you're seeing is this kind of mismatch it's kind of like not mismatch that's not the one I'm looking for this hodgepodge of like bro talk that you're getting with Pat McAfee now, you created that. ESPN is why Pat McAfee has an audience. In the same way that CNN is the same reason why Joe Rogan or your local news is the reason why Joe Rogan has an audience or why any of these other big podcasters have an audience.

Because you lost the trust of the people and you lost the interest of the people. And now what ESPN is trying to do is try to get back all the people they lost. And you know what they're doing in trying to get back the people they lost? They're going to alienate the people they had gained in their previous thing. That's why you don't fucking bow down and kowtow to people. You just do what you do. But instead, ESPN got caught up in like this 2010 to 2022 world of Adrian Peterson beat the shit out of his kid with a cord. And we're going to talk about that for hours at a time. And people got burned out on it, man. People got burned out of you.

And the MSNBC, the MSESPN thing that I think Clay Travis started, that's true. And they got sick of it. So you brought those people in. You lost a bunch of people. Now you're trying to get back the people you lost. You're going to run off the other people. How about you just do what you fucking do? Anyway, good job, John Mimola.

You wrote something that I wanted to react to because most of the time on that website, it's shit. But anyway, more to come.