Clay Travis

Richard Clay Travis (born April 6, 1979) is an American writer, lawyer, radio host and television analyst, and founder of OutKick.

As a political commentator, he and Buck Sexton host The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, a three-hour weekday conservative talk show which debuted on June 21, 2021 as the replacement of The Rush Limbaugh Show on many radio stations.

In 1997, Travis graduated from Martin Luther King Magnet at Pearl High School in Nashville.

He graduated from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., followed by Vanderbilt University Law School in Nashville.

Travis originally worked as a lawyer in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Tennessee.

In 2000, he worked on Al Gore's presidential campaign.

Travis was hired to work on U.S. Representative Jim Cooper's 2002 congressional campaign but was fired for wrecking Cooper's wife's car.

He attracted media attention in late 2004 with his personal blog written while he was living in the U.S. Virgin Islands and working for Dudley, Topper and Feuerzeig.

A Tennessee Titans fan, Travis was unable to get NFL Sunday Ticket, the satellite TV package to watch NFL games in the islands, and went on a "pudding strike", eating only pudding every day for 50 days, with the goal of forcing DirecTV to carry the package in the Virgin Islands.

The effort failed, but he blogged about the experience and received media attention.

Travis began writing online for CBS Sports in September 2005, which for the first year was not paid.

In 2006, Travis gave up his law practice for good.

Later, while writing for CBS, Travis began working on a book, Dixieland Delight, where he visited the football stadiums of the 12 then-current members of the Southeastern Conference.

After leaving CBS, Travis became a writer and editor at Deadspin, and then a national columnist at FanHouse.

In 2008, Travis worked out at D1 Sports Training with NFL prospects preparing for the NFL Draft.

He later wrote a ten-part serial about the experience which he entitled Rough Draft.

In 2010, The Nashville Scene named Travis "Best Sports Radio Host We Love To Hate" in the publication's "Best of Nashville" issue.

He later became a co-host of a sports radio talk show, 3HL, on Nashville's 104.5 The Zone with Brent Dougherty and Blaine Bishop.

He also hosted a national sports radio show on NBC Sports.

In 2023, the YouTube channel for OutKick hit 1,000,000 subscribers.

Travis was called out by DeMarcus Cousins for a 2010 prediction he had made that Cousins would be arrested within the next five years.

In response, Travis offered to donate to a charity of Cousins' choosing.

Travis began a daily sports radio show on Nashville’s 104.5 The Zone, 3HL, in 2010.

After FanHouse was merged into Sporting News in 2011, Travis founded Outkickthecoverage.com.

The website later became one of the most visited college football sites on the web.

While there, he continued developing his reputation for occasionally "contrarian" opinions.

In 2014, Travis resigned from his role on 3HL and was hired by Fox Sports for its weekly college football Saturday pre-game show.

In 2015, he signed a deal with Fox Sports to license his entire sports media brand under Fox Sports, including Outkick the Coverage, which was folded into Fox Sports' website.

Travis describes himself as a "radical moderate" and claims to have been a lifelong Democratic voter before the election of Donald Trump in 2016.

He also started a national weekly television show, started a daily Outkick the Show broadcast on Periscope and Facebook, and began a national radio show with Fox Sports Radio in 2016.

After leaving 3HL, in 2016 he began the “Outkick the Coverage” radio show for Fox Sports Radio nationwide mornings from 6-9 am et.

Travis left that show in May 2021, when it was announced Travis and Buck Sexton would be taking over Rush Limbaugh's time slot on Premiere Networks.

That show debuted on June 21, 2021.

A self-described "radical moderate" who is pro-choice and against the death penalty, Travis said he voted for former President Barack Obama twice and previously never voted Republican.

In 2016, Travis voted for Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party.

As an undergrad, Travis interned for U.S. Representative Bob Clement for four years while in college at George Washington University.

In August 2016, Travis criticized his alma mater, Vanderbilt University, for planning to remove the word "Confederate" from its historic Confederate Memorial Hall, comparing the move to actions taken by "Middle Eastern terrorists."

In 2018 Travis began a daily sports gambling TV show for Fox Sports on Fox Sports 1.

The show aired for four seasons before ending in 2022.

Since 2021 he has also been on Fox Sports’s Big Noon Kickoff college football pregame show.