This week ESPN laid off more employees. Other than some notable names, this isn’t really a big story. ESPN has been shedding talent for years as their business remains under pressure following its peak years of maximum relevance, revenues and profitability.

The reality is that ESPN is in a secular decline. Like most businesses that are in a secular decline, you get cost cutting.

But the main reason this made news is Ryan Clark was let go. Clark has been “controversial” in the realm of sports media outrage mostly for discussion points centered on race (as well as another time he told Peter Shrager he basically didn’t know what he was talking about because he never actually played football).

But the reality is that most consumers don’t really care if Ryan Clark no longer shows up on NFL Live when they flip on their TV. It’s only a story to a tiny group that is perpetually online and/or makes a living off the sports-media-commenting-about-sports-media news cycle.

Additionally today, we saw an absurd story about Caitlyn Clark and comparing her situation in the WNBA with Emmitt Til and historical racial atrocities of the past. And again, it got me thinking. Who is this for?

It’s a completely absurd opinion. But it got people talking. Is that the point?

Or does nobody read anything anymore, so you have to wander into the realm of insane to generate any response at all?

The reality is that all of this speaks to the current trend of sports media’s decline. Almost everything outside of live games is rapidly descending to zero value. The only exceptions are individuals who have built their own audience or have enough of a personal brand to rise above the slop. And these individuals are either entrepreneurs doing their own thing, or they’re being paid more and more while the rest are laid off.

ESPN is basically becoming Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith and a bunch of nobodies.

The USA Today columnist who told us today that Caitlyn Clark is about to spark a wave of violence against black people is completely irrelevant, likely to be replaced by AI content quite soon.

One question I ponder is did the decline of sports media lead to the increase in political slop, or did the increase in political slop lead to the decline of sports media?

The common view at least among those who reside in this world is that it’s the latter. “Go woke, go broke.” I don’t think it’s that simple.

I think the decline of sports media has led to filling the air with more nonsense. Because the value of all of it is going to zero. Hard analysis of last night’s game? Going to zero. The most progressive sports media members talking about the racial impact of some sports moment? Going to zero. It’s all dying.

I’ve always said to get ahead in sports media, you need to be one of the following or better yet a combination of the following: Incredible level of quality. Unique access. Funny.

But the problem is “level of quality” is going away as a differentiator as our AI tools accelerate daily.

Unique access is becoming less of a thing because all athletes and coaches have gotten so good at saying nothing.

So that leaves funny.

Funny is hard. Maybe the better word is entertaining.

Can you be entertaining while also really knowing sports? This is basically the formula for all the overpaid guys these days. Guys who have huge audiences and outsized personal brands.

Outside of this, your only options are be the loudest guy in the room during each moment of sports media outrage or work your tail off trying to outrun the secular value decline. Tough options.

A simple rule of thumb for today’s short attention span world is whether or not you’re still playing a new game after a minute or two.

With 82-0, the five minute threshold passed, and I quickly racked up dozens of entries - its interface was intuitive and easy to restart another entry. I showed it to my son who’s an NBA fan. He jumped in as well. I sent a few fun lineups that flirted with high records such as 75-7 to a long-term friend group chat. That night, I sat watching the NBA Playoffs rattling off entry after entry. I hit the perfect 82-0 a few times. I probably did hundreds of entries within its first 24 hours.

The surge on social media continued. Within a few days I heard Bill Simmons discuss it. By all accounts, this was an astounding success.

However, I never touched 82-0 again after the first 24 hours. I haven’t heard anyone mention it in weeks. Was this a success? I don’t know.

For weeks, I’ve been processing the viral 82-0 event.

It speaks to the state of sports media, sports fandom and what we consume online.

The Ever Evolving Sports Media Ecosystem

The digital world disrupted the old sports media ecosystem of newspaper columnists, Sportscenter highlights and AM talk radio.

But now the digital world is being completely upended by something else.

The internet is ripping apart the “old” distribution systems that once held the digital sports media world together. The home page is dead. Search is less dependable. Social platforms have mostly all converged into the same doom scroll adventure.

Written content is rapidly moving to two extremes: high end, long-form, Substack-ish content for the few still interested in reading and the other end where both the value of a piece of content and the cost of the content is approaching zero. Reading anything seems to be rapidly going away.

Sports highlights are ubiquitous and real-time on places like X. AM talk radio has been replaced by podcasts.

So what stands? What remains?

Live sports are thriving. It seems like nearly all sporting events are hitting record viewership. Even the NBA which has had years of down ratings, hit it big with the Knicks and the Wemby-led Spurs in the NBA Finals. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that in a world where almost everything is becoming noise, the real thing - the games themselves - are becoming more valuable.

Major personalities like Bill Simmons, Pat McAfee, Clay Travis, Dave Portnoy, etc. have become supremely valuable because of their ability to work across all platforms. Yes, Stephen A. Smith is a huge star, but I’d argue more of a relic of the previous era.

But other than live sports rights and the few gigantic multi-platform stars, where does sports media go? Where should a sports media entrepreneur lean?

Back in 2010, I created a college football destination on the web by understanding the new world of blogging and seeing the market opening of an online community that leaned into the unique regionality of college sports. I was heavily influenced by the idea of creating strong online brands (interestingly, most exemplified in my opinion at the time, by the Gawker portfolio).

But the big bet was that online distribution was more important than named journalists creating the content. The rise of social media feeds offered millions of eye balls (and traffic) regardless of the byline on the article. The traffic was quickly massive. Our writers were unknown. We beat all the traditional players.

But this wouldn’t work in 2026. Organic traffic sources are severely compromised. And web traffic is in a secular decline.

Saturday Down South represented execution that aligned with the current sports media environment. Or better yet, we were early, saw where the environment was going and capitalized on it.

Today’s environment is one of individual brands (e.g. stars and influencers), closed app ecosystems and social feeds. Influencers with outsized audiences can make a killing. Everyone else is fighting for the scraps.

Fantasy Sports Longevity

I’ve long believed that fantasy sports are one of the most perfect online media products. Its longevity across eras of digital disruption prove my case. But why are fantasy football (or baseball) leagues such a hit over decades where it seems like nothing has stayed static?

A fantasy football league offers an ideal combination of sports fandom and just enough analysis and number crunching to both appeal to nerds while not dissuading the analytically challenged.

But even more importantly, it brings active, fun fandom into circles of friendship and community. The most important part of sports is the shared experience of it. And a fantasy football league taps into this.

A well run fantasy football league utilizes a platform like Yahoo, ESPN, or Sleeper and often brings together 10-12 sports fans IN-PERSON to execute a draft. For many middle aged men, it’s one of the most fun nights of the year. And now you’re invested in your own team throughout the season. It’s a completely separate dimension of fandom from rooting for your team or favorite player. It just works.

The “daily fantasy sports” iteration of fantasy sports leagues aren’t the same. DFS is more of a betting product than a “group of friends” product. As such, I predict that traditional fantasy sports outlasts daily fantasy sports products.

Season long user engagement escapes the daily noise. Nearly everything online is noise today including most of sports media.

82-0 was a viral sensation, and I really loved it. But its structural defect was that it could not escape the noise and will be left in the dust bin as one of the things that grabbed our attention for a moment in the summer of 2026. Along with a zillion other things.

And almost all of sports media falls into this bucket. Many podcasts are just daily reactionary audio episodes reacting to the latest news. Most “articles” are AI or SEO slop not meant to be impactful by itself, but rather a mere part of editorial “tonnage” where the totality of it all might drive enough traffic to eek out enough revenue to keep the lights on.

The X social media feed is where lively, robust, good sports community should exist, and it does in some form, but just like moderating message boards of old are nearly impossible, maintaining a quality social feed seems to be impossible.

This disaster that is social media has left an opening for an app such as the “Real App” which seems to be a real story in sports media right now. It’s essentially a live scores app combined with community features. Their focus on execution and quality of product has led to it becoming one of the hottest sports media companies in 2026.

While most of the “tonnage” that is sports media is rapidly approaching zero value, experiences that focus on the joy of sports, shared experience with friends and community and have nothing to do with the noisy news cycle remain valuable.