College football commentator Josh Pate is still on his way up, covering America’s second-most popular sport.
But he already has his eyes on turning another passion into a business.
In an interview this week with OutKick, Pate revealed plans to launch a new content vertical focused on meteorology and storm-chasing. Pate, who hosts one of the biggest college football podcasts and just announced a new weekly show with ESPN, said he hopes to build content around his longtime hobby sooner rather than later.
“Weather is my other passion. Storm-chasing specifically,” he said. “This is something I’ve given a lot of thought to over the past year. This had a lot of my attention, specifically since last winter. So I don’t think this will be a hypothetical for long. I think this is something that we’ll try and pursue.”
Pate lives in and produces his show out of Nashville, and told Outkick that he already spends 15 to 30 days on the road each spring on storm-chasing trips. While he doesn’t expect to host a show on the topic, he clearly believes his interest could drive one to success.
“Now, I’m not a degreed meteorologist, so I certainly wouldn’t be the face of this kind of project,” Pate said. “But I love atmospheric science.”
“It’s a world I live in already,” he added.
The timing of tornado season in the spring, Pate said, lines up well with college football.
There is a significant cottage industry around storm-chasing and documentation. Of course, the stories can also often be a matter of life and death.
The broader relevance of meteorology news and content is appealing to Pate.
“The audience for college football, let’s say a market cap of 100 million people, 60 million people, whatever,” he explained. “The market cap for weather is the United States population.”
Pate’s passion for extreme weather is unusual for a sports media commentator, but if there is anyone who could pull off such a crossover, it would be someone like Pate, who lives in the affected area of the country and has experience in the space.
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