Jason Whitlock Reveals Why He Left Clay Travis's Outkick

Following his departure from FSI when his contract with Fox Sports expired in June, Jason Whitlock joined Clay Travis’s Outkick within the month and his columns became so popular that at one point they crashed the publication’s website.

But something clearly didn’t work out as the 53-year-old departed Outkick in early 2021 to “carve his own career path,” according to Travis. Deprived of a byline on Outkick since mid-December, Whitlock did guest-write a piece for The Blaze following the insurrection at the Capitol last month.

It appears more bylines for Whitlock on The Blaze could be on the way as he is in talks to join either Fox News or Blaze Media, sources tell Front Office Sports. Those sources may or may not be Whitlock himself, given that he just did an interview with FOS where he talked about his future plans as well as everything that went down at Outkick.

According to Whitlock, his departure stemmed from a disagreement he had with Travis about the equity stake Sam Savage, OutKick’s third partner, had in the company. Per Whitlock, Savage was awarded an equity stake in OutKick without making a $500,000 investment it had previously been agreed upon he would make.

“I objected. I confronted Clay and Sam about it. Clay said that he didn’t want to waste time or energy pursuing Sam’s investment,” Whitlock told FOS. “I found this preposterous and baffling. My equity in OutKick was based on ‘sweat.’ I believe my ‘sweat’ is far more valuable than Sam’s. Sam, of course, disagreed. He told me that my arrival at OutKick was a ‘kick in the nuts’ and that all three of us should own one-third of OutKick. I told Clay in November that I was going to exit OutKick unless Savage invested the $500,000 he committed … It was a bad business deal, a byproduct of my failure to properly vet my business partners.”

Outkick responded to Whitlocks’s comments in a statement to FOS: “Outkick provided Jason access to all information necessary to make an informed business decision regarding joining the company. Nothing at all was misrepresented to him — or his lawyer — in any way whatsoever. He chose to leave after a short tenure and as we said over a month ago on the site when we announced he was leaving, we continue to wish him well.”

As mentioned above, Travis and the rest of the Outkick team may be wishing Whitlock well in his new gig at either Fox News or Blaze Media sometime in the near future.

“I think I’m best judged on my actions. Where I’ve been writing and talking usually give an indication of my interest. I think both places are tremendous platforms where I could excel,” Whitlock told FOS. “I’m not leaving sports. Sports, politics, culture and race are all in the same lane now. I’m going to continue doing what I’ve been doing since I became a columnist at the Ann Arbor News in 1992. I’m going to blend it all together. I’m a culture critic who has used sports to analyze culture. Now I’ll just analyze culture. Where I’m going to do it is yet to be determined.”

Stay tuned.