Beer League Live #40: Chad Withrow on Launching Sport & State, High School Football in the NIL Era, and Building a Career in Sports Media

🎧 Watch Episode 40

Watch the full conversation with Chad Withrow on the Beer League Live YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/J8dmUWUDRRs

Chad Withrow Launches Sport & State — and Opens Up on the NIL Era, Youth Softball, and Making It in Sports Media

Chad Withrow spent his launch day the way most people wouldn't dream of spending it: going straight from the 7 a.m. debut of his brand-new show to the Get Off My Lawn Studios to talk about it. "I thought I don't have enough going on today," he joked. "I need to come talk to you guys, too." That's the energy he brought to Beer League Live #40 — a guest who's spent two decades in Nashville sports media, and who picked the biggest day of his career to sit down with us.

👋 Meet the Guest

Chad Withrow is a Nashville broadcast fixture with one of the more unusual résumés in the business: seventeen years at a single company, from 2004 to 2021. He started as an intern for legendary sports-talk host George Plaster after an internship with the Houston Astros fell through right out of the University of Tennessee. From there he worked his way up — executive producer, 6 p.m. hour host, host of a Friday night high school football show, founder of his own high school football website, and eventually a daily three-to-four-hour show — all on 104.5 The Zone, including a run on The Midday 180.

In 2021 he left to join Clay Travis at Outkick.com, where he sharpened his skills behind the Hot Mic. Three months into that contract, Clay sold Outkick to Fox News — a move Chad didn't see coming, but he stayed on for five more years. When Clay's non-compete cleared and he launched a new media company, there was never a question of where Chad would land.

That company is Sport & State, and Chad now co-hosts Hutton & Withrow alongside longtime broadcast partner Jonathan Hutton.

🚀 A Front-Row Seat to Launch Day

August 19, 2026, 7 a.m. Central — that's when Sport & State went live, capping roughly two and a half months of prep since Chad and Hutton went off air at Outkick. He was candid about what starting over actually looks like:

"I think I was 89th follower on this new Instagram channel... and the YouTube channel is starting at zero."

The team did manage to reclaim their old Outkick YouTube channel, giving them a head start around 5,000 subscribers, and the broader Sport & State roster already includes established names like The Next Round Live out of Birmingham and sports-wagering hosts Kelly Stewart and Ariel Epstein.

As for what changes without Fox News in the picture, Chad didn't hesitate:

"It's not owned by Fox News. The people that he hired are going to be themselves, and that's cool... Clay hired us to be us."

Clay's hiring philosophy, Chad says, comes down to four words: smart, original, funny, authentic. Politics stays with Clay and Buck's show — Hutton & Withrow is built around SEC football, the NFL, and wherever sports and culture intersect. The team is already planning live coverage around several marquee SEC weekends this fall, including Ole Miss–LSU at the Grove in September.

🏈 High School Football in the NIL Era

Chad is stepping back into high school football coverage this season, calling a Mid-State game of the week for Upper Cumberland Reporter with Jonathan Hutton, starting with Brentwood at Smyrna. It's a return to a beat he first covered in 2004 — and he says the sport has changed more in the last five years than in the previous fifteen.

"The players have never been better. Coaching's never been better. But I will say the community pride — not the same."

The biggest driver, in his view, is the state's one-time transfer rule colliding with a financial arms race among top programs. A single transfer can gut a smaller school's depth overnight, and money — scholarships, financial aid packages, name recognition — increasingly shapes where talent lands. He pointed to a real example hitting close to home: a proposed merger that could have kept Mount Juliet Christian Academy's football program alive was recently voted down, leaving its future in doubt.

His sharpest read on why kids move schools so much more freely now:

"Your world was your world. I couldn't go on Instagram and DM some girl three towns over... Nowadays, doesn't matter if you leave. I'm still going to be friends with everyone who follows me on Instagram."

🥎 What Coaching Youth Softball Taught Him

Beyond the microphone, Chad has spent years coaching his daughters through rec ball and travel softball. His biggest lessons for any parent-coach: set expectations early, treat every kid fairly even while coaching them differently, and — repeatedly — go harder on your own kid than anyone else's, not easier.

"If your kid is hands down not the best player out there, don't send him to the All-Star game... you've really got to guard against it."

He also made the case for closed practices, where parents drop off and leave instead of watching from the stands:

"I never had a single parent in the stand for middle school basketball or baseball. Now so many kids are always looking to see mom or dad's reaction. That's not what you want."

And his ideal team going forward, if he coaches travel softball again: one with "no weak links" — where every family shares the same goals and the same appreciation for what coaches are volunteering their time to do.

🎤 His Advice for Breaking Into Sports Media

Asked what he'd tell a young person trying to get into the business today — including Beer League Live's own intern — Chad didn't sugarcoat how much the industry has changed since he started:

"You really got to nowadays be multimedia. You got to know how to edit, produce your own stuff, understand the tech behind it, and be willing to write, be on camera, be off camera... It's not good enough to say I'm just good at radio."

He also passed along a lesson from a college sport-management professor that's stuck with him ever since: it's not enough for people to know who you are — you need to be noticeable enough that they remember you, even if your job that day is just loading chairs for an event.

🏌️ Thanks to Our Sponsor: Club Champion

Beer League Live's newest sponsor is Club Champion, whose Cool Springs location fits golfers for equipment using Trackman analysis across multiple bays. If you're in the market for new clubs, mention BEERLEAGUE when you visit or sign up at clubchampion.com and enter promocode BEERLEAGUE— Club Champion has locations across the U.S., Canada, the UK, and Australia, and every sign-up helps fund more Beer League content.

🔗 Resources From This Episode

• Sport & State: sportandstate.com

• Hutton & Withrow on YouTube: @HuttonandWithrow

• Club Champion: clubchampion.com