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Jason McIntyre, the cohost of The Herd with Colin Cowherd on FS1, is celebrating his 10-year anniversary at the network. He spoke to Front Office Sports about the full-circle nature of working with Cowherd after the host infamously crashed his web site, The Big Lead (disclosure: I worked for McIntyre for several years), nearly two decades ago, and persevering through a several-year stretch coming off FS1’s proverbial bench. McIntyre also discussed how he linked up with an ownership group to acquire minority stakes in a New Zealand basketball team and, in 2021, Liga MX’s Nexaca.
Front Office Sports: You’ve invested in minority stakes in multiple international teams. Can you walk me through how this started, what investments you’ve done, and, what’s that been like?
Jason McIntyre: It’s been an incredible run, and we’re still enjoying it. So when I was living in Pennsylvania, I would go to the gym every day, and I would see this huge, like 6’7 white guy shooting threes and dunking. I’m like, “‘Is this guy in the pros? How do I not know him?” So eventually, I approached him. I found out he’s an international basketball player playing in Italy. I told him, “I should do a story on you for this website, The Big Lead.” And he’s like, sure, “Talk to my agent.” So I call up his agent and I’m like, “Hey, my name’s Jason McIntyre. I’ve got this website.” He’s like, “Hold on. Jason McIntyre of The Big Lead? I read the site all the time.”
Of course, we became friends. His name is Sam Porter. At the time he was an NBA agent. Like many others in the agent business, he decided to move out from that. He went and worked in the front office at DC United. When he was there, he got his feet wet in what it’s like to own a team. I ultimately joined his group, led by Matt Walsh, the former Florida basketball player and some others, and we bought into a New Zealand basketball team, the Breakers. That was a fun run. I never made it to New Zealand to see them, but when they would come to the U.S. for games I tried my best to get to Memphis or whatever to see them. We had some great dinners, just learning about basketball and hearing what they were doing with the front office. It was incredible. (Note: The group has since sold the Breakers’ stake.)
When they had that, they decided there was a big play coming in Liga MX, the top soccer league in Mexico. So he calls me up again. “Hey, Jason, are you interested?” And that was a tougher sell because it was a bigger monetary involvement than the basketball team in New Zealand. So it was one of those, you tell your wife, “Hey, would you rather buy a house or do you want to buy a soccer team?” That was a fun discussion. Ultimately, we decided on the soccer team, Nexaca, and it’s been amazing. We went and saw them against Messi last year in Miami. We’ve seen them in Seattle. I saw them in San Jose because with the League’s Cup, the MLS plays against League MX. And so it’s just been such a run watching the front office at work. I’ll text ideas to the GM, who’s just an awesome guy.
It really is the stuff that you imagine it being. It would be like, Ryan, if your buddy bought into the Chicago Bulls, you know, and he said, “Hey, you want to come along, and you got to pony up some money, and then you’re in the group.” You don’t want to overstep your bounds. Obviously, I’m not one of the higher-paid investors. Eva Longoria, Justin Verlander, you could go down the list, are in the group.
As I’m watching the games, I’m texting Sam, who’s one of the primary guys, just being like, “What a goal. This offense looks great.” You just get into it, and it’s been a lot of fun.
FOS: So it’s been 10 years for you at FS1 now. It’s been a crazy full circle. I’m old enough to remember when Colin crashed The Big Lead. Now you’re on your second show with him at FS1. What has this whirlwind been like for you?
JM: I think the flight out to Los Angeles for the move was June 1, 2016. And within a couple days, the NBA Finals started. My first memories at Fox are of the Warriors blowing a 3-1 lead in the Finals to LeBron and the Cavs. And then within a couple weeks, Kevin Durant left the Thunder for the Warriors. The timing could not have been more perfect back then.
But when you look at just the years at Fox, oh my gosh, the network’s transformed so much. It’s been incredible. Yes, second show with Colin. The website was blown up in 2007, so now we’re going on two decades. And it is funny how things work in life where you just have a random occurrence like that. And now, we talk on the phone every week. We text, we’re kind of in lockstep with agreement on a lot of stuff in sports and at-large. We do disagree on stuff, but it’s healthy disagreement. And it is crazy how we’ve become friends over a crashed website when we didn’t know each other.
FOS: When you have calls with him, are you basically getting a private version of his show?
JM: Sometimes I do wonder if he’s test-driving theories on me. So, usually after a huge football game or basketball game or a big news story, he’ll just randomly call up and go into material. Or I’ll text him stuff and that triggers him to then call me. I didn’t really think about that, but he definitely bounces stuff off me and vice versa.
FOS: In between Speak for Yourself and The Herd, you had several years on the bench at FS1 after moving off the former. How did you persevere through that to make it through the other side and get back with your starter’s jersey, so to speak?
JM: In hindsight, it’s easy to talk about. In the moment, it was brutal. It was not fun. Talk to anybody in TV who was on a show and then wasn’t on a show and was at the network and just filling in. It was exciting in that it enabled me to go do Undisputed when Skip and Shannon were out—I would go in and fill in with Chris Broussard and company and it was awesome. I basically filled in on every show at the network whether it was Lock It In [the former gambling show] and I even did First Things First in New York, which is a fun 3:30 am call time. But yeah, it enabled me to try out all the shows; they clearly liked me enough to keep me around. Half the battle in work and in life is justifying your existence.
Fortunately, I had a big digital background, so they added me to that team. I did videos, and did a digital show with Charissa [Thompson] and Colin, and one with Geoff Schwartz. And then they’re like, hey, can you write about gambling? Boom, I can certainly write about gambling. I started a podcast at Fox.
This was in about 2018. At around the same time, iHeartRadio moved me from the Saturday morning show to a five-day-a-week podcast. Again, in the moment it was tough, but looking back, it worked out perfectly because it enabled me to start the podcast, and it also enabled me to kind of branch out and try things on my own. My son tells me, “Dad, you’ve got to have a YouTube page. These random kids are coming up to me at school and saying, ‘I saw your dad on YouTube.’ I was like, “You mean they don’t watch TV?” He’s like, “Dad, I don’t think a lot of people watch TV like they watch YouTube.” So now I started a YouTube page and I recently started a gambling newsletter for the World Cup and the upcoming NFL season.
I’m able to do all this stuff because I persevered and stuck with it. While I was on the “bench,” I would talk to guys like Matthew Berry and Adrian Wojnarowski and just get their thoughts on what to do. It’s easy to quit, right? Anybody could just be, “Well, that’s it. I had my chance in TV,” but, you know me, I’m not a quitter. And this is the stuff I love. For some people, this is a lot of work, prepping topics and going to talk on podcasts and TV and radio. I just love talking sports. I love doing the research and getting ready for the discussions.
