Katie Nolan hasn’t been entirely absent from the sports and media landscape since leaving ESPN late in 2021.
In 2022, the Framingham native was part of NBC’s Winter Olympics coverage and Apple TV’s “Friday Night Baseball’’ broadcasts.
She’s a regular guest on the exceptional “Pablo Torre Finds Out’’ podcast, and early last year made it to the final round of “Celebrity Jeopardy!’’
But after being part of a few shows and networks including ESPN’s “Always Late With Katie Nolan’’ that recognized her talent, knowledge, and humor but never quite figured out how best to maximize them, she has kept a lower profile, taking time over the past year or so to step back, recalibrate, and ponder the potential paths ahead.
Somewhat to her surprise, that included a renewed bond with sports purely from a fan’s perspective.
“I was a sports fan on TV, but that’s different from being an authentic sports fan,’’ said Nolan, who won an Emmy Award for her show “Garbage Time’’ on Fox Sports 1 nearly a decade ago. “I didn’t really notice how much working in sports changed my relationship with it until I got away from it.’’
That realization helped to inform her next step, which Nolan will officially take this coming week with the launch of “Casuals,’’ a twice-weekly podcast for SiriusXM that aims to connect with fans that want to enjoy sports in a lighthearted way without getting lost in the weeds of analytics or X’s and O’s.
The podcast debuts Tuesday, with another episode on Thursdays. The Tuesday edition of “Casuals,’’ Nolan said, will focus on the big moments and story lines of the week. The Thursday edition will feature guests from sports, comedy, and entertainment discussing their fandom and trending topics in their areas of expertise.
“The idea came from watching sports and consuming content purely as a fan,’’ Nolan said, “or at least as a fan who knows half the people [in sports media], so a fan who has met, you know, [ESPN NFL analyst] Mina Kimes.
“But watching stuff as a fan and seeking out content for myself that speaks to the type of fan I am, I wasn’t really finding anything that I felt actively made it a mission to try to bring other people in.’’
Nolan acknowledges that the sports podcast landscape — and really, the podcast landscape on just about any topic — is well beyond its saturation point. For a new podcast to find an audience, it must fill a void or fulfill an underserved demographic.
The underserved demographic that helped spark Nolan’s idea actually included the massive fan base of the biggest music star in the world.
“So watching the Taylor Swift-of-it-all happen in football, when she began dating Travis Kelce and attending Chiefs games and it became this phenomenon that brought an enormous amount of new interest to the NFL, her fans would go to ‘New Heights’ and listen to her boyfriend’s podcast,’’ said Nolan, citing Kelce’s wildly popular podcast with his brother Jason. “They didn’t feel there was a podcast that was, ‘Hey, if you’re new here and you’re interested, we’re going to talk about football and sports in a way that isn’t too inside baseball and isn’t too stat-based or intense.’
“So my brain was like, ‘Well, if we’re going to do a podcast, it has to meet some sort of a need that you feel isn’t being met.’ Seeing that influx of young women taking an interest in football, my first thought was, ‘Where are they landing? Where are they going? Who’s helping them? Who’s talking to them? Who’s making not just a punny joke about a Taylor Swift song title in their football analysis, but who is using the cultural references and touch points that they’re familiar with to discuss this thing with them?’ ’’
Nolan said she has some do’s and don’ts for the show, which will originate from a studio in New York’s Bryant Park. Nolan does not intend to reference gambling on the show, not because of some moral stance, she said, but because “it went from not being legal to being part of literally any sports segment on anything.’’
She wants guests there in person, because she believes it’s essential for the podcast to project the “fun in the room,’’ as she puts it.
“I just want to laugh,’’ she said. “I just want people to laugh. I just want sports to be a place where everybody feels that they have access to it.
“We won’t be breaking down a defense. We won’t be talking about, I don’t know, pitch-framing, unless there’s a really fun reason to do so. Won’t be talking about strategy in that way. I’m not a very strategic person, as you can tell through my career moves.
“But something I’ve discovered throughout my career is, just by nature of being a woman, I’m going to have a different perspective on things than most of what we’re hearing in sports media. And I think I just kind of want to lean into the way that I see things and the way that I discuss things.’’
Nolan pauses.
“I just felt this needed to exist,’’ she said, “and so I’m going to make it.’’
Chad Finn can be reached at chad.finn@globe.com. Follow him @GlobeChadFinn.
