Clay Travis

After FanHouse was merged into Sporting News in 2011, Travis founded Outkickthecoverage.com.[5] The website later became one of the most visited college football sites on the web.[6] While there, he continued developing his reputation for occasionally "contrarian" opinions.[7]

In 2008, Travis worked out at D1 Sports Training with NFL prospects preparing for the NFL Draft. He later wrote a ten-part serial about the experience which he entitled Rough Draft.[8]

In 2010, The Nashville Scene named Travis "Best Sports Radio Host We Love To Hate" in the publication's "Best of Nashville" issue. He later became a co-host of a sports radio talk show, 3HL, on Nashville's 104.5 The Zone with Brent Dougherty and Blaine Bishop.[9] He also hosted a national sports radio show on NBC Sports.[5]

In 2014, Travis resigned from his role on 3HL[9] and was hired by Fox Sports for its weekly college football Saturday pre-game show.[6] In 2015, he signed a deal with Fox Sports to license his entire sports media brand under Fox Sports, including his website Outkick the Coverage, which was folded into Fox Sports' website.[10] He also started a national weekly television show, started a daily Outkick the Show broadcast on Periscope and Facebook, and began a national radio show with Fox Sports Radio in 2016.[11]

Travis was called out by DeMarcus Cousins for an 2010 prediction he had made that Cousins would be arrested within the next five years after.[12][13] In response, Travis offered to donate to a charity of Cousins' choosing.[12][13]

In August 2016, Travis criticized his alma mater, Vanderbilt University, for planning to remove the word "Confederate" from its historic Confederate Memorial Hall.[14] Consequently, Travis lost a $3,000 promotion deal he had with Jack Daniel's.[14] Travis admitted online that a Jack Daniel's representative decided that his Twitter commentary on the statue "brings (the company) into public disrepute."[15]

On September 15, 2017, Travis appeared as a guest on CNN, with anchor Brooke Baldwin, to discuss free speech, specifically whether ESPN personality Jemele Hill should be fired for calling Donald Trump a "white supremacist" and stating that police officers are "modern-day slave catchers" on her personal Twitter page. Travis stated that it would be bad policy on ESPN's part to fire Hill for her private comments, just as it was bad policy when ESPN fired Curt Schilling for comments he made regarding transgender bathrooms on his personal Facebook page. Travis received criticism for using a phrase he commonly used on his radio show when he said "...I'm a First Amendment absolutist – the only two things I 100 percent believe in are the First Amendment and boobs..." [16] Baldwin cut the interview short and later responded, "when I first heard 'boobs' from a grown man on national television (in 2017!!!), my initial thought bubble was: 'Did I hear that correctly??..."[17]

Travis has attracted harsh criticism for spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.[18][19][20][21] Travis has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the disease, calling it "overrated",[22] claiming that it is less severe than the seasonal flu,[22] that fewer than several hundred would die of the disease in the US,[18] that victims of the disease probably have been "killed a month or two earlier" than they would have been otherwise,[23] and inaccurately stated that the mortality rate for those under 80 and without pre-existing conditions is "virtually zero".[18] He also claimed that some advocates for mitigation measures to slow the spread were "rooting for the virus to triumph".[24][25]