As of last night, Clay Travis’ Outkick the Coverage has merged with Fox Sports. The exact nature of the relationship is not clear. According to Fox Sports, “Clay Travis has officially joined FOXSports.com as a contributor.” As Clay tells it,
Outkick the Coverage and FoxSports.com have entered into a partnership agreeement. OKTC won’t change at all, we’ll just have a much broader audience. And those times when you try to hop on the site and we’re overloaded with traffic and you can’t get to our article?
Yeah, that won’t happen again.
Which is why FoxSports.com is hosting our latest story.
Did that ever happen to anyone? Anyway, Clay continued (as he always does): “After a lot of conversations FoxSports.com made the most sense and I’m excited about what’s to come.” He promises more details in the future, and for now says: “I have editorial control and Fox doesn’t want us to change at all.”
Together with MSN, Fox Sports already owns Yardbarker, which it bought in 2010, and through which it has a relationship with similar sites, such as Larry Brown Sports. Fox Sports seems to like to keep all of these formerly independent blogs underneath the umbrella of its Yardbarker Network. Major questions at this point include whether OKTC will receive the same treatment, whether OKTC itself will become a mere FoxSports.com reverse-portal, and what it means for Clay to be a FoxSports.com “contributor” (and why Clay did not reference that label on his own site).
As for clues about what Clay thinks– or thought– about Fox Sports, we can turn to the premiere source of information on all things Clay, Clay Travis, who in August 2012 responded to a question about ranking the major sports media outlets’ college football coverage by rating Fox Sports last among the given options, adding
I would rank Fox Sports last in its coverage of every sport. In its humor. In everything that it does online. I truly have no idea what this company is doing. FoxSports.com is a complete and total disaster of a site. So it’s no surprise that it’s also bad at college football. It’s also behind SBNation, Bleacher Report, and even OKTC.
Less than a month ago, he wrote that he had not visited FoxSports.com in over a year: “I barely have a conception of what [the page looks] like on direct entry.” Now that his article is plastered atop the front page of FoxSPorts.com, though, it’s probably his homepage.
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Travis also has preexisting ties to NBC, where he made television appearances during football season last fall. He also is a relatively recent addition to NBC Sports Radio’s national weekend lineup. He’s still listed on that lineup right now.
I noticed today for the first time that Clay has modified his site’s logo on his homepage to reflect his new relationship with Fox Sports, discussed in the main post above. The phrase “Fox College Football Blog” now appears below Clay’s old logo:
I haven’t noticed anything new on the FoxSports.com/Yardbarker side of things, but I will continue to update this post with any future developments.
As of this posting, NBC Sports Radio still lists Clay as part of its weekend lineup:
On Monday, Clay disclosed more information about his relationship with Fox Sports. As had been rumored elsewhere, he will be joining Fox Sports 1’s version of ESPN College Gameday this fall, broadcasting from Los Angeles, and will do remote appearances on that network during the week.
He says he no longer will do television spots for NBC, but he will continue to do his NBC Sports Radio show and his weekday radio program in Nashville.
The Saturday FS1 show– he’ll appear beside Erin Andrews, Eddie George, and three others– raises some practical questions for Clay. First, it would seem to conflict with his NBC Sports Radio program, assuming that program is a live broadcast. Second, and probably more important, it would seem to preclude him from attending Saturday games, or daytime SEC games, anyway, and from making the full weekend trips to SEC games that formed the basis of some of his more popular original articles. While Clay always has insisted that he would never trade his editorial independence for a larger paycheck, it looks like he might be willing to give up Saturdays in SEC land.
The article with the details, such as they are, is here: http://www.outkickthecoverage.com/oktc-joining-fox-sports-college-football-television-coverage.php.
In addition to the modification to the top banner on his website shown in the previous comment, this now appears on OKTC in the bottom right corner of every page:
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Nice Sharing. You should write more about this!