After months of speculation and foregone conclusions, Peter Schrager is officially getting his 2:00 p.m. show on ESPN.
ESPN will announce that a new afternoon show hosted by Schrager will debut Sept. 10, as The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand first reported. Awful Announcing has learned that Schrager is expected to announce the show himself during an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show on Wednesday.
Big Day with Peter Schrager will air Mondays through Thursdays at 2:00 p.m. ET through the end of the college football season and then expand to Fridays as well. During the college football season, the new Bussin’ & Pate on Campus show will broadcast live at 2:00 p.m. every Friday.
While Schrager’s forte has been in the NFL, the show will cover all sports, not just football. Big Day, which will be based in the New York studios, will feature several solo segments where Schrager can share his thoughts on the day’s sports news, but guests from the ESPN and NFL Network worlds — including Steve Smith Sr., Jason McCourty, Adam Schefter, Ian Rapoport, Mike Garafolo, according to Marchand — are expected to make regular appearances. The program will be conversational in tone but not a debate show. Think more Get Up than First Take.
The show’s name is a nod to a segment popularized by Schrager during his time on NFL Network’s Good Morning Football, where he would spotlight a specific player, coach, or team executive.
The announcement of this show has been a long time coming.
The 2:00 p.m. ET timeslot was previously filled by SportsCenter. After Around the Hornaired its final episode in May 2025, ESPN also put SportsCenter into the 5:00 p.m. slot, where it had been posting solid audience numbers and creating the opportunity for something new.
Practically from the moment he arrived at the Worldwide Leader from NFL Network in April 2025, reports started hinting at Schrager getting an afternoon show of his own. Those hints eventually became near confirmations. The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported in May 2025 that the idea of Schrager doing a show at 2 or 5 p.m. was “pretty likely,” and that he could be “a central figure in some sort of ensemble” rather than a solo act. CNBC’s Alex Sherman, who first reported that ESPN was considering replacing the 2 p.m. SportsCenter, noted that the potential Schrager show would be an “all-sports” concept rather than another NFL-only hour, which has since checked out.
Things went quiet on that front for a while, until they suddenly picked up in a hurry a few months ago. In May, Marchand reported again that a program built around Schrager was the leading candidate to replace the 2 p.m. edition of SportsCenter. In July, OutKick’s Bobby Burack reported that ESPN was expected to announce a new 2 p.m. show hosted by Schrager in the coming week(s).
And now we’re here.
In less than two years, Schrager has quickly cemented himself as a valuable fixture in ESPN’s NFL coverage. He stole the show at McAfee’s NFL Draft Spectacular last spring, launched The Schrager Hour podcast with Omaha Productions last fall, and starred in a guest host role on Get Up that could have been seen as a proof of concept to ESPN executives that he could handle a show of his own. He’s also been candid about missing the three-hour daily runway he had at Good Morning Football, where he could spend more time on topics that interest him personally.
This news also appears to confirm that the 5:00 p.m. hour is staying as is. That slot has also been filled by SportsCenter since Around the Horn’s cancellation. Scott Van Pelt was floated for months as a candidate to take it over, but he decided to stay in his late-night role rather than moving up.
The post ESPN debuting ‘Big Day with Peter Schrager’ in 2 p.m. timeslot on Sept. 10 appeared first on Awful Announcing.