Josh Pate Hates How National Media Covered College Football: “It Was Almost a Slap in the Face”

No one covers college football with as much insight, knowledge, and passion as Josh Pate.

The Columbus, Georgia native had his Eureka moment while working as a news anchor at WMTZ NBC 38 when the station’s meteorologist introduced him to Facebook Live.

“It was like a light bulb,” Pate tells Complex.

Soon, he was talking college football with 15 to 20 viewers on a stream. A decade later, Pate owns the IP of his wildly popular show and became a regular on ESPN’s Get Up and Fox Sports’ The Herd with Colin Cowherd. Now, one of the most powerful people in sports media has leveled up again.

Bussin’ & Pate on Campus, his weekly college football show with Bussin’ With the Boys co-hosts Taylor Lewan and Will Compton, premieres September 4 on ESPN.

When did you start your day?
Four o'clock this morning. I don't feel like yesterday ended.

Is that a normal thing or just today?
Yeah, it's pretty normal. It's nonstop this time of year.

How do you feel about where you’re at right now professionally?
I feel like we're hitting a ramp as a brand. Personally, I just feel like the show has really started to scale to the point we always wanted it to. But then it’s like, let's not try and reinvent the wheel. Let's understand what got us here. Let's listen to what the audience is telling us and just turn the volume up.

What made you stand out amongst all the people in your space?
I think understanding the audience because I am them. I think maybe it served me well not coming from a classical media background. And that's not to look down on anyone who does, But the nature of how I came into what I do now is I came up a different side of the mountain. I came up as a fan. I came up working construction, fabric warehouses. I consumed sports talk radio all day. I've been a college football fan my whole life. I, like many other fans, always had a way I thought the sport should be covered, but I was viewing it from outside the fence. And so when YouTube and podcasting and Facebook Live and all these things come along ten years ago, it's like there was a gap in the fence all of a sudden. You could start your own show. You could theoretically overnight have the overhead and distribution that you need, courtesy of the internet. And I think because that was my entry point, it's just given me a different lens to view everything through.

As a fan, what was your least favorite thing about how sports talk radio covered college football?
I hated that it was the number two sport in the country and was treated fifth or sixth. I hated that sometimes it was very obvious the people who were talking college football at the national level did not eat, sleep, and breathe it. These were people from the NBA lane, the NFL lane, the MLB lane who cut their teeth covering pro sports that were talking college sports just because a producer told them, "Hey, we need you to do that for a couple of segments today." And if you grow up where I grew up and you consume this stuff and you're immersed in it all year, it was almost a slap in the face what was passing off as national college football coverage, even as recently as 10 years ago.

Did you have a side hustle starting out?
I didn’t really have one only because there was no time.

I was a few years into my media career when this thing started for me, I was a news anchor and I remember vividly, I saw a Facebook Live stream one day on a weather monitor in our news studio. And I asked the meteorologist, "What is that?" I didn't even know Facebook Live existed.

He told me what it was and it was like a light bulb. Whoa, that's a way different entry point for someone like me than anything that exists right now. So I started doing a version of what I do now on my Facebook page and ended up on a YouTube channel. That was a side hustle, but my bosses shut it down, which is fair because it was a breach of my contract. It was competitive content. So I had to wait a whole year. And then I started my own YouTube channel with a renegotiated deal there with them. But I actually never really did it as a side hustle.

Which network was this?
That would've been WLTZ NBC 38 in Columbus, Georgia in 2015.

What can people learn from your success?
I think I've come to re-imagine what right place, right time really means. There's been a lot of blessed moments on this path that I've been on. But I really think I learned that you get yourself in the right place and just stay there. And right time eventually finds you. 

When we first started doing the skeletal version of the show that I do now, I was doing it for 15 or 20 people. We were lucky if we could get 15 or 20 live viewers on those first shows. But we always did the show with a full national flavor. I always did the show and held it to as high a standard as I possibly could because I understood one day this is going to become fully commoditized.

One day major media is going to realize, ‘Hey, this space[streaming] is a jungle. You’ve got to earn every view, every download. But you had to already carry yourself like you were working for them. You had to hold yourself to that standard

What changes would you make to college football if you were put in charge?
Man, oh boy. Freeze the [playoff] format for a few years. The sport doesn't have to upend itself every year.

What do you miss about college football pre-playoff system?
That's a good question. I would say I loved bowl season. I loved the romanticism of bowl season. I loved when the term “Meaningless Bowl Game” never existed. I miss when there was an era where it wasn't strictly playoff or failure. There was an understanding there are different levels to this sport. What spells success for Alabama may not be what spells success for Wake Forest. And we totally lost that nuance now.

I miss the debates and how much each game mattered.
So you and I are pretty much the same person then. Not only is that how I feel, but I also remember, I think it may have been like. It was 2004. So ‘04, I'm living in Columbus, Georgia, which is 45 minutes from Auburn. Auburn goes undefeated and USC and Oklahoma play for the national title. So Auburn finishes number three in the poll. I remember how nervous every Saturday was. I wasn't even an Auburn fan. I'm watching it as a college football fan.

But I remember we got to the finish line and Auburn doesn't make it and I remember thinking to myself, You know what? I don't think it's the worst thing in the world that some people are mad at the end of the year. I actually think that's a sign that we've got a good system, not the other way around.

Finish the sentence for me. The biggest heel in college football is. . .
Lane Kiffin.

Why?
I don't think he's bad. I think a lot of people don't respect how the end happened with Ole Miss. I just think it's tough for a lot of people to square that you took a program that had never been to the playoff, to the playoffs, and you bolt. Now there's a lot of context there. Obviously, Lane had reasons for doing what he did, but I think there's a certain portion of the college football public that will plug their ears and have no interest In what Lane says.

Recent power purchase?
House.

Where do you live now?
I will be moving from downtown Nashville down to Brentwood.

Los Angeles?
No, no, no, no. Brentwood is also a nice little neighborhood about 15 minutes south of Nashville.

Does power corrupt?
It can corrupt. Just like money can corrupt. Doesn't have to.

Best college football quarterback of your lifetime?
Probably Cam Newton. I think what he did in 2010 was pretty otherworldly.

Do you use AI at work? If so, how?
I do. I mainly use it as a function to enhance staff workflow. It cuts down a lot of the post-production work for us and the market research for us. . . And look, I may not care about everything it brings back to us, but if even 20% of it's relevant, it's worthwhile to look at that

What are you most excited about for the future? It doesn't have to be sports.
Honestly, I'm excited that our company, our profile is big enough now where we could really make an impact in helping other people.

I've just never been in a position financially where we could do that until recently. The other thing that really excites me is I take really, really big responsibility with being one of the first people to be given the kind of opportunity that I've been given and we've cashed in on it. And to me, cashing in means we're in a position now where we could give dozens of other people opportunities or maybe dozens of other people get opportunities because the proof of concept is there now. And that's really exciting. And I don't even know what it looks like. I don't even know how it bears itself out in the future.

I grew up a pro wrestling fan. I remember watching Steve Austin in the late '90s. Other people who were in the business at the same time talk about how their lives changed just because they worked alongside him, just because they existed at the same time as him. And to me, that's always been the biggest indicator of a needle mover. It's not someone who can make money for themselves and just create success for themselves. They're so successful that everyone in their orbit ends up being better off because they came along. It always stuck with me listening to people talk about how different that world ended up becoming just because they were in it at the same time Steve Austin was in it.

You’re speaking my language now. Have you seen the A&E documentary on Stone Cold? There’s this Paul Heyman quote that sticks with me about how there’s a sacrifice to greatness.
I know exactly what you're talking about. I have probably watched that Heyman clip, I don't know, 10 or 15 times because it transcends what he's talking about. It transcends the subject matter of just that documentary. And it's like in any given industry; you may have zero inflection points that ever come close to meeting that. But at the best, you may have one or two of them. And you never know when they may be five minutes away or five days away or five months away. But it's really impactful. And I watch that, I listen to that, and I automatically apply it to my world instead of the world he's talking about.