Pat McAfee has never been one to mince words. McAfee, who is now a featured, arguably the featured, host of ESPN’s popular College Gameday college football pregame show, is making it clear that he has not intention of changing that.
Posting to his Instagram stories, McAfee shared a collage of criticism he received stemming from a post from the College GameDay account, which displayed his enthusiastic introduction during the show in Eugene, Oregon, on Oct. 11.
McAfee addressed the comments in another video.
I just got done a little morning workout. It’s nice to read those comments,” he said in the video, according to Awful Announcing. “I’d like to let all you old f*cks know, I hate you too. Never got along with that class of people. Teachers, principals, you name it. Since I [was] a kid, always hated me. It’s kind of a part of life now.”
“If you think about old white people and old ESPN people, those are really the people that hate me the most at this stage of life,” he went on. “Now granted, there’s some other groups that certainly have threatened my life on a pretty regular basis, I’d say they hate me too.
But throughout the entirety, old whites and the old ESPN people over the last like three years have really hated me. That’s who all the producers are of GameDay too. So now — it’s been a fun run. College football is great. OK, cheers. Have a great day.”
Fans reacted to McAfee’s shocking comments on social media.
“Blasting your producers is such a weak move,” one fan wrote on Twitter.
“As an old white person, he’s not wrong. I don’t get the draw, because he just seems to be a loud attention hound. But I’ve not been the market for some time now, and you cannot deny his draw,” someone else added.
“This is more a testament to traditional television broadcasts as a whole. People who have worked in the industry for a long time thing there’s one way to do things, and are resistant to try new things outside the box,” another fan added.
It’ll be interesting to see if any of the suits at ESPN decide to respond.
About Qwame Skinner
Qwame Skinner has loved both writing and sports his entire life. In addition to his sports coverage at Comeback Media, Qwame writes novels, and his debut; The First Casualty, an adult fantasy, is out now.