ESPN finds itself under fire as news of an upcoming weekly college football program, in which YouTube star Josh Pate teams up with former NFL player Will Compton and Taylor Lewan from Bussin’ With The Boys, began spreading around. The timing has drawn criticism because the announcement lands just days after ESPN laid off several longtime on-air names, prompting Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy to take direct aim at the network.

“Glass Break: ESPN is planning a new college football show with Josh Pate and Bussin’ With the Boys’ Will Compton and Taylor Lewan,” Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports posted on X.

According to Glasspiegel’s reporting, the show will air Friday afternoons from college campuses, sometimes overlapping with the site of the next morning’s College GameDay broadcast and sometimes not. An ESPN spokesperson declined to comment on the report. No time slot has been confirmed. But Portnoy wasn’t convinced.

“Espn really just Barstool Jr now 😂,” Portnoy posted, and it’s the second time he’s made that tongue-in-cheek remark. He used nearly identical wording (“ESPN is officially Barstool Jr.”) when ESPN first brought Pate, Compton and Lewan aboard back in August 2025, later adding, “I absolutely despise the snakes who run the place.”

The context is that Compton and Lewan built Bussin’ With The Boys as Barstool podcasters before striking out on their own, so Portnoy is framing ESPN’s college football strategy as chasing a similar digital-first audience Barstool already built.

That said, ESPN has been building toward this for some time. Pate began appearing regularly on Get Up last year to discuss college football, while Compton and Lewan have had a steady presence across the network’s daytime lineup throughout the season. From a business standpoint, it makes sense too. Pate, Compton, and Lewan already bring large built-in audiences, so giving them their own show is a smart move.

The problem is the timing.

Just two days before his aforementioned post, Portnoy posted on X, “Another glaring difference between ESPN and Barstool. When our stars become huge and command tons of money like Mcafee at ESPN we part ways rather than fire people who have been with us for decades to pay for the 1 star. Loyalty matters here. At Espn there is no such thing. Not saying our way is right but just more family vs corporate.”

Back in January, ESPN acquired NFL Network, NFL RedZone, and the league’s fantasy football business, a deal that also gave the NFL a 10% equity stake in ESPN. That acquisition brought hundreds of NFL Media employees under ESPN’s umbrella, and it’s the same deal that chairman Jimmy Pitaro cited in a memo to employees on Tuesday explaining the recent layoffs, according to Forbes.

Those layoffs affected several well-known names. Cam Newton, Ryan Clark, Karl Ravech, and Tom Pelissero were among those let go, along with several other on-air personalities. So when this new show was announced shortly after, it did not go unnoticed, and reactions online were swift.

In the end, ESPN is betting that the built-in fan bases of Pate, Compton, and Lewan will make this new show a success, and that bet may well pay off. But launching it so soon after laying off familiar faces was never going to sit well with everyone.