Pat McAfee and the Threat to Sports Journalism

The Pat McAfee Show, hosted by the ex–NFL punter turned TV presenter, is the only program on ESPN that opens with a warning label. It was one of the few concessions McAfee made to his new Disney-owned employer when he brought his YouTube hit to the network in September in a five-year, $85 million deal. The label urges viewers to please bear in mind that the show is “meant to be comedic informative”—entertainment, in other words, not journalism—and that the often dopey opinions and sometimes false facts shared by him or his guests “do not necessarily reflect the beliefs” of anyone else at ESPN. The warning ends with a jokey plea: “Don’t sue us.”

McAfee is an athlete, not a reporter, and when it comes to stuff like accuracy, he’s careful to set the bar very low. He has become the epitome of athlete encroachment on terrain historically controlled by nonathlete journalists, and to put it mildly, the journalists are not happy about it. McAfee couldn’t care less.

Pat McAfee’s influence is bigger than his audience. His hours-long show airs during TV’s midday dead zone, when most sports fans are at work or school. It averages just 332,000 live viewers on its linear broadcast, according to the most recent figures from ESPN, and factoring in other platforms like ESPN’s YouTube channel and TikTok, its daily audience tops out at just under 900,000—a fraction of the eight-figure viewership for Monday Night Football. But the numbers belie how much attention he gets for the more provocative things that are said on the show, including the dingbat views of the Jets quarterback and anti-vaxxer Aaron Rodgers. Airtime equals power, and no one at ESPN spends more time on air than Pat McAfee. From the moment he arrived, he’s arguably been the network’s most influential mouthpiece and indisputably its most polarizing.

If you’re a newcomer to The Pat McAfee Show, it can be tough to follow. The show is filled with locker-room joshing delivered in the outer-Pittsburgh Yinzer accent of McAfee’s youth. It’s one of America’s more unsung regional accents, super fun to imitate, but McAfee and his supporting panel of regulars—even the ones who aren’t from Pittsburgh—lay it on so thick, you might need to consult an English-to-Yinzer dictionary. Teams win chompionships. Joe Flacco, the name of the aging Super Bowl–winning quarterback, is pronounced Jee-oh Flacc-kew. Even the ticker at the bottom of the screen has a Yinzer accent: Program is spelled “progrum.”

[Keith O'Brien: You’ll miss sports journalism when it’s gone]

Everyone observes a firm dress code: down. Way down. McAfee, who has bouffant hair that crests like a giant wave at Nazaré, prefers black tees and white tanks. Boston Connor, one of two members of McAfee’s peanut gallery known as the Toxic Table, has a porn ’stache, an intentional mullet, and an endless supply of animal-stencil T-shirts: wolves, lions, elephants, snow owls. He looks as though he saw Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover and thought to himself, That guy looks awesome. Ty Schmit, the other half of the Toxic Table, favors Green Bay Packers jerseys and University of Iowa hoodies. McAfee will often wrap up segments by leading all of them in a round of applause for themselves, like they just aced a tackling drill. “Good seg, good seg,” he’ll say.

Watching an episode of The Pat McAfee Show is like attending mass at sports church. Since its inception in 2015 as a YouTube livecast on Barstool Sports and continuing through its move to ESPN, the show has been broadcast from an enormous studio–slash–home gymnasium dubbed “the Thunderdome” on McAfee’s property outside Indianapolis, the city where he spent eight seasons with the Colts as a punter. His guests all appear to be cast in his image—jocular white dudes with beards—only paler and softer of flesh. They’re not athletes, they’re not journalists, they’re not even particularly good on TV, and yet they’re on ESPN for 15 hours a week because they’re friends with McAfee. When he really gets rolling, his flock will join in with some call-and-response, but instead of crying out “Amen” or “Praise Jesus,” they belch out a loud WHADD. Roughly translated, it means “Damn right.”

By the time McAfee retired unexpectedly from football at age 29 to concentrate full-time on The Pat McAfee Show, he’d made $15 million in the NFL, and according to the prevailing wisdom at the time, he was out of his mind to walk away from a job that paid him a fortune to kick a ball five or six times a game. In the NFL, though, kickers are marginal figures who get the spotlight only when they screw up. On The Pat McAfee Show, he’s the pope. He often describes himself as a “dumb punter” and his buddies on the show as “a collection of stooges,” but he’s far more shrewd than he lets on, and he proved it when he accepted ESPN’s offer. (He’s also a regular panelist on ESPN’s College GameDay, and a commentator for the WWE’s Monday Night Raw. McAfee might love pro wrestling even more than he loves football.)

The men who watch The Pat McAfee Show—its audience is almost entirely male—share a lot in common with Pat McAfee. It’s on in the weight room at the team training complex (whadd), or in the living room at the fraternity house (whadd), or on the TV above the bar at Buffalo Wild Wings (whadd). It’s like background noise for committed sports fans. It’s not so much content as friendly company. His viewers aren’t watching McAfee’s progrum with focused attention, or for trenchant insights. They’re watching because of the easy camaraderie, because he and his pals are a quality hang, solid guys who like talking sports and crushing beers.

In stark contrast with much of ESPN’s morning and daytime programming, with its fire-breathing takes and verbal warfare that 30 Rock once lampooned with a fake show called Sports Shouting, The Pat McAfee Show has very little conflict. No one’s arguing or talking over one another or putting guests on the spot. This is surely a big reason why so many notable sports figures are willing to come on the show.

In April alone, McAfee hosted the women’s basketball phenom Caitlin Clark; the San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy; UConn’s back-to-back national-champion head coach, Dan Hurley; and Major League Baseball’s top pitching prospect, Paul Skenes (better known to McAfee’s viewers as Livvy Dunne’s boyfriend). During last week’s NFL Draft, McAfee offered a reminder about why he’s so valuable to ESPN, booking a pair of coveted media-averse guests: the former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. They feel comfortable letting down their guard around McAfee because he sees athletes, coaches, and the business of sports through the same prism that they do. ESPN may be paying his salary, but McAfee is clear about where his loyalties lie.

Since McAfee joined ESPN, he’s given just one extended interview of his own, and it was to a popular podcast called All the Smoke hosted by the ex-NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, whom McAfee befriended during Jackson’s stint with the Indiana Pacers. McAfee doesn’t talk with journalists unless it’s on his show and he’s the one doing the interviewing, and they’re rarely invited. (He didn’t respond to my requests for an interview.) ESPN’s NFL correspondent and scoop machine Adam Schefter appears often, and the NBA reporter Brian Windhorst has dropped by during the playoffs—mostly to talk about the Pacers—but they’re exceptions. Almost from the jump, the suspicions between McAfee and ESPN journalists have been mutual.

[Jemele Hill: Aaron Rodgers is lighting his football legacy on fire]

When ESPN offered McAfee that $85 million, its parent company, Disney, was in the midst of corporate-wide layoffs. ESPN was hit particularly hard. Lots of people got fired to pay for McAfee. Yet upon arriving, McAfee sounded hurt that he didn’t get a warmer reception. Just four months after joining the network, he accused ESPN executives of “actively trying to sabotage” his show, and he called out one of them by name, the powerful event and studio production chief Norby Williamson. Williamson, McAfee said live on air, was “a rat.”

It was a stunning moment—the kind of public airing of grievances that ESPN is renowned for not tolerating. Many past ESPN talents, such as Jemele Hill (now a writer for The Atlantic) and Bill Simmons, have been pushed out for far less. And yet McAfee suffered no consequences. No suspension, no public reprimand. Then, three months later, Williamson was fired. If any doubt remained about who had the power now at ESPN—the suits or the dumb punter—it vanished along with Williamson. McAfee could seemingly get away with anything, and then boast about it in public. Before Williamson got guillotined, McAfee bristled during his appearance on All the Smoke at the notion that he’d gone after one of his bosses: “I’m like, I don’t got a motherfucking boss! What are we … like, are we talking [ESPN Chairman] Jimmy Pitaro or [Disney CEO] Bob Iger? Is that who we’re talking about? Because those are people who could technically be described as my boss.”

No relationship, though, better crystallizes the growing enmity between McAfee and ESPN’s news division than his continued indulgence of his good friend, the New York Jets quarterback, defiant anti-vaxxer, ayahuasca enthusiast—and, for a brief moment, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s rumored running mate—Aaron Rodgers.

On October 23, 2023, during one of his weekly appearances on The Pat McAfee Show, Rodgers took a veiled shot at the Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, referring to Kelce as “Mr. Pfizer” for his participation in an awareness campaign urging people to get vaccinated against COVID. McAfee made sure to note on air that he was vaccinated, an implicit rejection of Rodgers’s position, but he didn’t challenge his friend about it and he expressed surprise afterward that anyone expected him to. That’s not the line of work he’s in, folks. He was just kibbitzing with his freethinking friend.

Then on January 2, 2024, Rodgers shared on McAfee’s show a slanderous rumor about the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel and Jeffrey Epstein that deserves no repeating here. Kimmel’s show airs on ABC, which, like ESPN, is owned by Disney, meaning that McAfee had let his buddy use his platform to smear a co-worker. Kimmel responded angrily on X, calling Rodgers “a soft-brained wacko” and threatening to sue. This time, even McAfee seemed to know that Rodgers had gone too far. Later that day, he met with the only two people at Disney he recognizes as authority figures, Jimmy Pitaro and Bob Iger, then expressed contrition during his broadcast the next day. He chalked it up to “shit talk” gone awry and added, “We apologize for being part of it.”  

Once again, there was no evident discipline for McAfee. And a week later, Rodgers was right back on the show for his regular appearance, during which the quarterback notably did not apologize to Kimmel. (The next day, McAfee announced that Rodgers would not return to the program for the remainder of the NFL season, but no one seriously doubts that he’ll be back before the fall.)

Two months later, CNN reported that Rodgers had, in private conversations, expressed suspicions that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a government inside job. After Rodgers tweeted a denial—“I am not and have never been of the opinion that the events did not take place”—McAfee read it aloud on his show. “I’m happy to hear that,” McAfee said. “That is good news.” Anyone expecting McAfee to denounce his friend should’ve known better by then.  

[From the September 2013 issue: The global dominance of ESPN]

On All the Smoke, after the Kimmel smear but before the Sandy Hook nonsense, McAfee shared that he’d lost sleep over his role in the Rodgers saga, saying, “Maybe I am fucking this up completely.” But he also offered a novel defense, which is that his relationship with Rodgers had enabled him to tease out a more honest and complete portrait of a historic figure in sports. “Whenever there’s documentaries made about Aaron Rodgers, they are going to use so much of our show,” he said. “Is that not journalism?”

No. It is not. Journalism requires an active pursuit of the truth. This was more like stepping on a rake. He’s not completely wrong, though. We can debate forever the ethics of platforming public figures who say odious things, but it’s also true that Rodgers used to be considered among the more thoughtful, intellectually curious stars in the NFL. And now, thanks in no small measure to The Pat McAfee Show, we’ve heard enough of his self-satisfied, moronic bloviating to know better.  

April 5 had all the makings of a triumphant day for McAfee: Williamson had been fired in the morning, and the show would be broadcasting live from Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, site of that weekend’s WrestleMania XL. Borrowing from the College GameDay script, McAfee likes to take his show on the road, and wherever he goes, he’s greeted by a brigade of fans packed behind his broadcast platform like thick stogies. This day, at least 20 percent of them had fake championship belts slung over their shoulders like they were Triple H. You could swap any of them for Boston Connor, and no one would notice for an hour, including Pat. “Mac-uh-fee!” they chanted. “Mac-uh-fee! Mac-uh-fee!”  

Right away, though, something went wrong. To viewers at home, nothing seemed amiss, but inside the arena, the sound wasn’t working. The fans couldn’t hear anything. McAfee didn’t realize until sound technicians started scrambling behind the podium, frantically working to rectify the situation. Now the crowd began a new chant: “We want speakers! We want speakers!” Minutes of airtime passed. McAfee’s mood soured. “Obviously a massive week in Philadelphia—we’ve got all these people staring at us, can’t hear a damn thing we’re saying,” he said. “One of the most uncomfortable situations I’ve ever been placed in in my entire life right now.” Every time he tried to move forward with the show, the crowd would cut him off and start chanting again, and now they were getting salty. “Bulllll-shiiiit! Bullll-shiiiit! Bulllshiiiit!”

[Read: Sports streaming makes losers of us all]

On TV, you could see the panic bleed into McAfee’s eyes as it dawned on him how bad this could get. This was a three-hour broadcast. If they started bringing out WWE legends and the sound still wasn’t fixed—folks, this was a wrestling crowd in Philadelphia. They would absolutely turn on him. The situation required McAfee and his Toxic Table to do something they were deeply ill-prepared for: be television professionals. Buy time. Improvise.

Instead, McAfee and his panelists exchanged small talk for a while like they were waiting for an elevator to arrive. Apropos of nothing, Pat congratulated two crew members named Nick and Carly, who’d apparently just had a baby, and led the panel in a round of applause for them. A producer handed a mobile microphone to Boston Connor and instructed him to go interview fans, but Connor doesn’t really know how to do that, so instead he approached someone dressed as the WWE star Cody Rhodes and, unprovoked, called him a “crybaby bitch.”

Anything can happen on live television, as the cliché goes, which is why TV professionals always have a plan B. McAfee, though, barely has a plan A. Even on its better days, his show is slapdash to the point that it feels like an act of defiance, like a noogie to the heads of all those suits in Bristol. (“We don’t really like to plan or think things out,” McAfee says often.) Finally, after more than 30 minutes, the sound in the arena got fixed. McAfee, champion of the working man, led the panel in another round of applause: “Big shout-out to the Philadelphia union for coming through,” he said. He hinted that it must have been the suits, who were always out to get him, who’d screwed up. “Hey, I come from Pittsburgh. Believe me, I very much understand the entire process of the entire thing.” Whatever had gone wrong, disorder was now restored.