It has been nearly a year since the last time that Jon “Stugotz” Weiner was on The Dan Le Batard Show, but the show’s audience is still no closer to a clear answer as to why he left in the first place.
But in a segment on Thursday’s episode of the show, Le Batard offered perhaps his most specific explanation around Stugotz’s departure yet, revealing that he has “worked in protection” of keeping Stugotz a part of the company with his name on the show’s branding. However, Le Batard added, “business is hard,” and Stugotz’s desire to branch off alone and begin a sponsorship with a competitor to the Le Batard Show‘s main sponsor has made it “a little difficult to do business.”
The conversation sprouted off from Le Batard’s criticism throughout the week toward New York media, which he believes should hold Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart’s feet to the fire over his support for Donald Trump, after Dart introduced the president at a rally last weekend.
Le Batard acknowledged that he is also not being fully forthright about the big story surrounding his own business before addressing Stugotz’s absence head-on.
“This makes me uncomfortable, obviously, but I’m comfortable in telling you that I love that dude and I’m always going to be indebted to him,” Le Batard said.
“And I hope that he sits in that chair again, because I’ve told him many, many times I want him to make money from Meadowlark for as long as it exists. But that’s up to him whether or not he comes back. He’s got a job here. And he built his thing, and we were going to do these things together. So I hope he comes back. I’d like to have him back. He knows that.”
Le Batard added that he is stuck between loyalty to his longtime cohost and wanting to maintain his usual level of transparency with an audience that has followed him from local Miami radio to ESPN to independent production.
Le Batard said it has been “killing” him to leave the situation unresolved and unaddressed.
“It’s been crushing to me. Imagine how much I must value that relationship, when you guys know how transparent I am, and you guys know that I care about him and that I want him here,” Le Batard said. “Imagine how hard it must be for me to protect the relationship with him and keeping his name on the show in service of wanting him back so the audience can have what it wants, because I want it too.”
Le Batard founded Meadowlark Media with former ESPN president John Skipper in early 2021, signing a lucrative licensing deal with DraftKings that has served as the foundation for the company. As Meadowlark negotiated an extension with DraftKings last year, some of its shows fell out of the package. Among the shows to be axed from the DraftKings deal were Stugotz’s God Bless Football and Stupodity. As the DraftKings deal took shape, the company underwent significant changes, most notably with Skipper leaving as CEO and Stugotz “stepping back” as cohost. By late last year, longtime producer (and God Bless Football cohost) Billy Gil had followed them out the door.
Since then, Stugotz has hosted and produced multiple podcasts independently, with FanDuel as a top sponsor. Late last year, he signed on to be a national host for Fox Sports Radio.
But Le Batard insisted Stugotz is still employed by and in business with Meadowlark — if he wants to be.
“Business is hard. And we were and are in business together, still,” Le Batard said. “And he’s building his own thing, and he wanted to do that, and we helped him do that. And we wanted it to co-mingle with this, and it did for awhile, and then it didn’t.”
When Stugotz announced the Fox Sports Radio deal, he expressed interest in finishing out a slate of scheduled appearances throughout the month of January, under one condition, which he left unstated. Stugotz did not join the show in January, and has not appeared since last summer.
Longtime Miami host Jonathan Zaslow has filled in consistently in the months since, though he recently told Awful Announcing that he does not see himself as Stugotz’s direct replacement and believes the Le Batard Show audience deserves more details as to what happened with Stugotz.
Le Batard insisted he “will always love” his former cohost and is “wildly grateful” for their partnership. Le Batard also revealed the two have “exchanged texts” recently in hopes of lining up time to talk more directly.
While Le Batard expressed a level of urgency in turning the page to whatever the next step closed by explaining that he cares about Stugotz’s career and family and doesn’t want to be disrespectful:
“I don’t want to say anything bad about a person that I care about. I don’t want him to say anything bad about me. We’re trying to build two things together, and at the moment, we’re sponsored by competing entities. And so that makes it a little difficult to do business.”
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