Clay Travis just became the most interesting free agent in sports media, and naturally, he couldn’t resist having some fun with it. Front Office Sports broke the news on Monday that the OutKick founder’s deals with Fox, iHeartMedia, and OutKick are all set to expire at year’s end. And the internet immediately started speculating about where the controversial 46-year-old would land next. 

Travis, who sold OutKick to Fox for $100 million back in 2021, has since become one of the most influential voices in the MAGA movement. He has been quietly talking to media companies and potential investors about his next move. An announcement could come as early as Super Bowl LX on February 8. That means Travis is officially on the clock to figure out whether he’s re-upping with his current employers or launching an entirely new media venture. But if you know anything about Clay Travis, you know he wasn’t going to let this news cycle pass without stirring the pot.​

Almost immediately after FOS tweeted their scoop, Travis quote-tweeted it with a response that had people scratching their heads. “I will be replacing @finebaum on @secnetwork when he leaves to run for senate in Alabama,” Travis wrote. He name-dropped ESPN executives Robert Iger and tagged both ESPN and Disney. “Many thanks to @RobertIger @espn and @disney who have all been huge fans of mine for a long time,” he continued. For anyone who’s followed Travis’s career, particularly his feud with ESPN, the idea of the network bringing him in to replace Paul Finebaum was about as believable as Alabama going winless in the SEC. Travis has spent the better part of a decade ripping ESPN for what he calls its “woke” coverage and liberal bias, making him one of the network’s most vocal critics.​

But Travis wasn’t done yet. He followed up his own tweet with a clarification that somehow made things even funnier. He posted, “PS this is not true. Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet, kids! Lots of good things coming though. But not on ESPN.” His fans collectively exhaled, laughed, and realized they’d just been trolled by a master instigator. Travis was admitting that he’d made the whole thing up just to mess with people, while also making it crystal clear that whatever his next move is, it definitely won’t involve working for the network he’s spent years criticizing.

He could have stopped there. But Travis doubles down on the troll and dropped one more tweet: “ESPN is paying me $100 million a year. @bhofheimer_espn just sent out the press release. Exciting time.” He even tagged Bill Hofheimer, ESPN’s VP of communications, the same guy who’d been publicly feuding with Travis just days earlier over whether Finebaum had actually been benched by the network. The $100 million figure was a not-so-subtle reference to the amount Travis pocketed from selling OutKick to Fox. 

And the idea that ESPN would pay him anything (let alone nine figures) was so absurd, it was actually hilarious. Travis was clearly having a field day trolling the sports media world. And the whole episode showed why he’s become such a lightning rod figure. He knows exactly how to work social media, push buttons, and keep himself in the conversation.​

The Finebaum fiasco that started Clay’s trolling spree

The thing about Clay Travis’s hilarious trolling about replacing Paul Finebaum on the SEC Network is that it didn’t come out of nowhere. Days before Travis started his fake press release shenanigans, he’d actually interviewed Finebaum on OutKick, and that’s when things got interesting. During the conversation, Finebaum dropped a bombshell that he was considering leaving ESPN to run for U.S. Senate in Alabama as a Republican, likely for the seat that Tommy Tuberville would vacate if he wins the governor’s race. 

Finebaum, who’s 70 years old, admitted the recent assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk had been a turning point for him. “I spent four hours numb talking about things that didn’t matter to me. And it kept building throughout that weekend,” Finebaum told Travis. “I felt very empty doing what I was doing that day.” The legendary SEC Network analyst even revealed that if President Trump personally asked him to run, he couldn’t refuse. “Impossible to tell him no. There’s no way I could. I would tell him yes.”​

And after that interview, Travis posted on his X that Disney and ESPN had pulled Finebaum from all his network appearances. He claimed, “ESPN has canceled all network appearances on all shows, including some that have occurred for a decade plus.” And the situation got messier when Bill Hofheimer, ESPN’s VP of communications, fired back on social media, calling Travis’s report “TOTALLY FALSE.”

But the facts were kind of murky. Yes, Finebaum did indeed miss his usual spot on Sunday’s “SportsCenter,” and he didn’t appear on Monday’s “First Take” either. But by Monday afternoon, Finebaum was back hosting his radio show. And by Tuesday morning, he was back on both “Get Up” and “First Take.”

So was Finebaum actually suspended, or was Travis stirring the pot? Nobody knows for sure, but the whole episode gave Travis the perfect setup for his ESPN trolling fest.​