Greg McElroy And Marcus Spears Bring Authenticity To Sports Talk TV With ‘Thinking Out Loud’

The SEC Network offices are a little louder on Mondays than normal thanks to the presence of Greg McElroy and Marcus Spears. McElroy and Spears’ natural state when they’re in the same room is to be talking and arguing about football.

In the green room after filming an interview segment with Georgia running back Nick Chubb, the two find themselves in an argument about Cowboys’ quarterback Dak Prescott. Both have ties to the Cowboys, with Spears a former Dallas player and McElroy’s father working for the Cowboys when he was growing up. McElroy expects a step back from Prescott in 2017 from his Pro Bowl level of a year ago. Spears disagrees. This argument goes on for five minutes before we can get to talking about their new Monday night SEC Network show, Thinking Out Loud.

The two can’t help it. Spears and McElroy first started working together back in 2015 in McElroy’s lone year as part of the SEC Nation crew and it was there that they unwittingly laid the foundation for their new Monday night show. After games, the two would sit together in the truck and watch games, constantly talking and arguing about the Saturday slate of games. In 2016, they were regulars together on SEC Now, and their discussion during commercials was more entertaining than the show itself, and the people in the production room started trying to figure out how to get them to do that on TV.

That’s how Thinking Out Loud was born; an effort to bring the off-camera personas of Spears and McElroy and their constant friendly arguments to the audience. The first key was figuring out how to make them comfortable enough to do that on camera, which meant creating a new set that wasn’t a traditional sports desk and taking a risk on letting them handle host responsibilities.

The original idea was to have them do the show from their actual desks in the SEC Network newsroom, and just bring cameras and lights into the office. That turned out to actually be a more expensive option than building them their own set, which they kept the office concept and gave the two desks facing each other with TVs and other visual elements around that allow them to move around the set rather than spending the hour-long show parked at their desks talking.

Being on the office set and in their normal clothes rather than behind a traditional desk in suits has worked in terms of making the duo far more comfortable in the early stages of their new show. What’s important not just because of the vibe they want out of the show, but also because they’re being asked to do something completely foreign to both, which is serve as the hosts.

“We feel a lot more comfortable, but it’s still a sh*t show,” Spears laughs. “We still, you know, we’re still trying to figure out reads, and you know, the time and all, how fast we need to go through promos and stuff like that. You know, stuff that people wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell watching the show.”

The latter part tends to be the source of the most frustration from both sides, as the production team tries to hit their marks, while Spears and McElroy have a tendency to get on a roll and cruise past the allotted time. Over the first few weeks of the show they’ve started to figure out how to combat that by lightening up the schedule when possible, giving them more time on topics.

Doing the show live means segments often get axed on the fly to create an extra minute here or there when things go over. As they’ve learned integrating a few more pre-taped segments ensures those parts hit the exact time allotment, while also giving Greg and Marcus a break from having to do everything live.

“The taping is huge for us simply because if you f*ck it up, you can re-do it,” Spears said with a chuckle. “And then, truly, it makes, like you said, it makes for a cleaner show because we can get that out of the way and not have to worry about that. Sometimes, we get the A-Segment done before the show starts. So literally, me and Greg are sitting in the studio waiting for the As to finish so we can come on live during our B-Segment and carry the show on through. And I think it has helped us.”

However, part of the allure of the show is the authenticity of it and how natural it feels and, for a pair of former football players, you would expect there to be some rawness when it comes to promos and traditional hosting duties. Well, at least, that’s the hope.

“I guess that’s kind of part of the fun of it,” McElroy said. “It’s not your traditional studio show, it’s raw, unfiltered commentary. That’s kind of my favorite part about it. We’re definitely working on trying to become a little smoother in and out of breaks, for sure, and it seems we can definitely grow in that area, but the fact that it is so imperfect is what makes it so human.

“I think we’d love to not be a train wreck doing the stuff that they want us to do, but then again, I don’t think we want to deviate too much from the fact that we are true analysts, that’s what we are. We’re not hosts and that’s the exciting part about it. I think our producer Baron [Miller], though, told us he would love us to be much tighter, but that’s our rebellious side, is making sure that we are a little bit … we want to be footbally. We want to be football guys.”

You don’t have to be around Marcus and Greg for long to notice that there’s very little difference between their energy and interactions on camera and when they’re just hanging out together trying to kill time prior to the show. The show was born out of their interactions off camera, although they didn’t know it. McElroy found out he was going to be doing a weekly show with Spears at SEC Media Days, and assumed it was just a similar deal to their weekly appearance on SEC Now.

It wasn’t until he came into the studios later in the summer that he realized the plan was for them to have a completely new show, with their own set. In a sports media landscape filled with debate shows and competitive takesmithing, Thinking Out Loud, manages to feel unique because it doesn’t force the two to pick sides against each other, but rather bring their perspectives (which happen to naturally differ an awful lot) to the hot topics of the week.

“I had somewhat of an idea, but I wasn’t really … I guess I just didn’t fully understand what all the resources they were putting into it, getting us the studio, formatting it the way they were. I thought it was going to be traditional television with me and Marcus.

“I did not know that it was going to be so casual and just so conversational. It’s just been so much fun. I think the chemistry between us is something that people have really admired and appreciated, because we’re really good friends. He’s genuinely one of my best friends. It’s great because he sees the game totally different than I do and I see it totally different than he does, but there’s still a common ground and a common appreciation for each other.”

Along with trying to create natural conversation and debate, the show also tries to find a balance between providing their takes on top storylines and providing in-depth analysis (something very important to Greg). McElroy is a quarterback at heart still, which means he still loves diagramming plays and breaking down where something went wrong or right on a big play.

Having an offensive mind and a defensive mind on set gives them an ability to expertly break down both sides of the ball, but the biggest key and the questions that comes up regularly in their production meetings are, “Does this fit our tone?” McElroy could break down an entire game’s worth of film, and for some that’d be thrilling television, but something both hosts noted they were proud of is how diverse their audience has proven to be in the responses they’ve gotten to the show. When they can make the in-depth football talk entertaining and enlightening to a casual fan that might not understand the nuances of the x’s and o’s of the game, that’s when the show is at its best.

“This is the thing that’s going on in the sports dynamic now,” Spears said. “Football is fun! So, the discussion that you have about real football can still be entertaining. … We get emotional about stuff. We get high pitch. We’re down on some stuff. And I think that part of the human experience is relevant and anything. So, I think for me and Greg, when we have a football discussion, it’s fun to us, so hopefully, it’s fun to the viewer.

“We can tell people that their team sucks in an entertaining way. We can say to people that their team is good in an entertaining way. And there are sometimes when we get into a deep football conversation and you let that go because there is a viewer who tunes in to know the intricacies of football. And as long as we don’t lose that, I think you can give that information with enthusiasm and excitement. People still get the entertainment value out of it. But they also say, ‘I learned a lot about my team.'”

The show is constantly in flux, as happens with a new TV show, trying out new segments and throwing out others that failed to land as they hoped when drawn up on paper. There’s a constant balancing act between debate, discussion, goofy segments, interviews, breakdowns, and involving fans via social media, all within the confines of an hour-long TV show. However, no matter what gets more or less airtime on any given week, the reason for the show’s success remains the same.

It’s the relationship between McElroy and Spears and their ability to get the other fired up about a topic. Both gladly admit they push the other’s buttons in an effort to get them to go off on a live TV rant, and neither shies away from their allegiances to their alma maters. Where traditionally (and it’s becoming less the case in recent years) media members have looked to hide their fandom in an effort to project objectivity, McElroy and Spears think it would be disingenuous to pretend like they don’t love the Tide and the Tigers, respectively.

As former players, it’d be almost impossible to hide their connections to their former teams, and they feel like they can be the voice of the fans. Their fandom also serves as the simplest way to get the other to go off. McElroy simply jabs at LSU a few times until the former All-American lets loose about his frustrations with his beloved Tigers. It’s a bit trickier with McElroy, whose Tide are the most dominant team in the country. However, Marcus still knows the way to do so by constantly bringing up out Alabama having a potential quarterback controversy after Tua Tagovailoa’s late game performances behind Jalen Hurts until McElroy takes the bait.

The friendly needling isn’t reserved to the show. Production meetings are regularly drawn out and interrupted as the two poke fun at each other, sparking a back-and-forth that derails the best efforts of the producers, Pete Watters and Baron Miller, to get through a discussion of the show’s C-block. While the conversation on and off set is almost the exact same, there is one significant difference.

“I probably would curse more on TV, but I can’t,” Spears jokes.

Other than the self-censoring, Spears and McElroy spend an hour every Monday night doing what they would if they were together out at the bar together: having a highly entertaining football discussion.