As a college football fanatic, I’ve tried a lot of different podcasts and shows for analysis on what’s happening in the expansive world of football. Recently, I began listening to The Late Kick with Josh Pate, and I can say that it’s my favorite college football podcast.

Pate is relatively new to the national scene of college football. Without major podcasting experience, Pate booted up the Late Kick January 2020 and gained lots of popularity frighteningly fast. I was hesitant at first, but once I had first listened to the show, I understood what the hype was about.

From the get go, it’s clear that Pate knows what he’s talking about. He’s very well connected with notable college football insiders, and consistently delivers behind the scenes coverage that other shows don’t normally cover. Another thing that sets the show apart from others is the lack of the same old hot takes that plague other college football shows. I feel like it’s a lot more information based and focuses more on facts than on Pate’s opinion. His knowledge of the sport is expansive enough to the point where I’ve seen people disapprove of Pate potentially moving to a role in one of the massive college football TV shows such as College Gameday in fear of his content being “dumbed down.”

Another thing that surprised me is how much Pate covers. During the college football season, he hosts three shows per week. One on Sunday where he recaps the games from the day before, one on Tuesday where he releases his top 25 poll as well as predicts the games for the upcoming week, and one on Friday where he goes through potential upsets for the next day as well as off-field developments from the week. This adds up to approximately a whopping 2-3 hours of content per week, with a great mixture of Pate’s predictions and opinions as well as cold hard news.

A potential gripe that viewers have had with The Late Kick is that it is definitely more centered around the Southeastern Conference, the conference that already hogs so much of the spotlight with these kinds of shows. This specific case makes sense, considering Pate’s southern roots, but for fans of non-SEC schools this might be a bit irritating. 

Overall, Pate delivers sound content on college football. Surprisingly, considering that the market for in-depth college football podcasts and TV shows are a bit slim, Pate’s podcast easily climbs to the top of my watchlist for college football content.

I highly recommend this podcast; to tune in, The Late Kick releases on Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday nights and can be found on any streaming platform. Highlights and a live stream of the podcast are shown on YouTube.