ESPN's Pat McAfee takes aim at sports media, claims his show was subjected to 'mischaracterizations'
Former NFL punter and current "The Pat McAfee Show" host did not hold back when he expressed his angst with some members of the sports media world.
The ESPN personality directly called out some of the outlets and media members with whom he had an issue, accusing them of grossly mischaracterizing his daily sports talk show. McAfee made the accusations during the annual media day for "The Worldwide Leaders in Sports."
McAfee was sitting on a panel with other prominent ESPN hosts when a question appeared to rub him the wrong way.
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A reporter asked whether the commentator spoke with his peers about "journalistic standards" since he made the leap from YouTube to ESPN. McAfee initially pushed the reporter to provide more clarity on his meaning of "journalistic standards" before ripping the sports media landscape.
"Sports media has never been wrong before? Did we have doctors on set during all of COVID on ESPN? How did that all go?" McAfee asked. "So, whenever you talk about these journalistic standards, was that at journalism school … we break news, I think, every other day on our show that would be nowhere else. Is that journalism, getting people to open up and chit-chat and talk and expand about who they are, is that journalism, interviewing people that never talked anywhere? Is that journalism?"
Andrew Marchand, a columnist for The Athletic, later asked the former Indianapolis Colts player to share more details on what he believed were the most serious mischaracterizations he personally faced.
"Because you made a lot of my life hell for a bit with the things that you reported, how you were reporting, what you were saying, and your source at the time was kept out of the conversation for purpose because of everything that you were kind of going to do," the "College GameDay" analyst said in an apparent reference to the coverage during his dispute with former ESPN executive Norby Williamson.
"So I just think an image was painted of me through a lot of different mischaracterizations and misrepresentations of what our show is. … And sometimes we might be the worst people on TV, and we’re going to try not to be that going forward."
In October 2023, McAfee called Marchand "a rat" for his coverage of the compensation Aaron Rodgers received for appearances on "The Pat McAfee Show."
"I appreciate the people that think they’re killing me right now for this. But if this is what I’m known for, I’m OK with it." McAfee said at the time. "With that being said, Andrew Marchand is a rat, OK? That is what he is. He tried to paint this in a way that makes me look like a bad person. And it’s like, you’re the bad person."
"The Pat McAfee Show" is scheduled to broadcast from the campus of the University of West Virginia on Friday, one day ahead of the Mountaineers' season opener against the eighth-ranked Penn State Nittany Lions.
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