As we\u2019ve learned at Awful Announcing, Pat McAfee often sees what\u2019s written about him.<\/p>\n
Specifically, he has an eye for negative things\u2014or at least what he perceives as negative.<\/p>\n
Just this week, the former Indianapolis Colts punter put the kibosh on a Front Office Sports column<\/a> that floated whether his Field Pass altcast, which ESPN has penciled into both Monday Night Football and its Super Bowl LXI altcast slate, was really a backdoor tryout for the MNF booth \u2014 currently embroiled in its own drama<\/a> \u2014 in the ill-fated Dennis Miller mold. The column tugged on a thread first pulled during a discussion<\/a> on The Ringer\u2019s Press Box, but McAfee dismissed the entire premise as invented. A few days later, he further poured cold water on the idea<\/a> and accused the people spreading the theory of trying to \u201ccontinue to pour gas on a fire of people that hate my guts.\u201d<\/p>\n He insisted color commentary was never his destiny. Entertaining people in their living rooms was.<\/p>\n On that front, few personalities in sports media can whip a crowd into a lather like McAfee, and fewer still move the needle as reliably, even as his ubiquity has become overexposure for a sizable slice of the audience. Beyond his Saturday perch, he fronts a weekday show that ESPN licenses, turns up across nearly every corner of the network\u2019s NFL and college football coverage, is in the middle of negotiating an extension that could reportedly reach $60 million a year and has even ventured into country music with an album knowingly titled \u201cThe Diary of a Polarizing Figure.\u201d<\/p>\n That brings us to Saturday\u2019s College GameDay, where McAfee took another swipe at something written about him. The desk was marveling at James Madison\u2019s start to the 2026 campaign when Rece Davis noted that two of the program\u2019s former head coaches, Curt Cignetti (Indiana) and Bob Chesney (UCLA), were also unbeaten before getting to Billy Napier, the program\u2019s current coach. Davis suggested Napier had suddenly figured out how to coach now that he was in Harrisonburg. But he was joking, of course<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always thought Billy could coach,\u201d Davis said. \u201cThat was a joke.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, really? Don\u2019t be joking on here! New York Times is gonna write an article about you! Don\u2019t do it, Rece!\u201d McAfee said. \u201cCollege football\u2019s fun. GameDay might be fun too. Don\u2019t do that, Rece. I promise you. We\u2019re in the entertainment business.\u201d<\/p>\n Rece Davis: \u201cI\u2019ve always thought Billy could coach. That was a joke.\u201d<\/p>\n Pat McAfee: \u201cOh, really? Don\u2019t be joking on here! New York Times is gonna write an article about you! Don\u2019t do it, Rece!\u201d https:\/\/t.co\/oKN6iwHYZg<\/p>\n \u2014 Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) October 17, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n McAfee was obviously referring to a Jerry Brewer column\u00a0published in The Athletic<\/a>\u00a0(a\u00a0New York Times-owned outlet) on Thursday, arguing that\u00a0GameDay now belongs to McAfee. And it\u2019s not as if Brewer didn\u2019t give McAfee his flowers. He credited him for the \u201cKicking Is Easy\u201d contest, which grew out of a Washington student\u2019s sign in 2023 and has since awarded more than $11 million in prizes and charitable donations, and he praised McAfee\u2019s knack for working a crowd along with the odd-couple chemistry with Nick Saban that often carries the three-hour broadcast. Brewer\u2019s thesis was that GameDay has become so centered on McAfee that it no longer feels like \u201cthe ultimate gathering place for all fans,\u201d no matter how high the ratings climb.<\/p>\n Ratings measure how many people are watching, not what they\u2019re watching, and Brewer found no shortage of moments this fall in which GameDay seemed to lose sight of the on-campus celebration that built its reputation. Take McAfee backing Sacramento State against Bowling Green while admitting he knew next to nothing about either side, or a Knoxville wedding segment fans panned as cringeworthy. How could we forget the September stop in Austin, where Rece Davis gave Sen. Ted Cruz roughly eight minutes, two more than Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, to hawk the Protect College Sports Act?<\/p>\n Brewer also turned his column to Kirk Herbstreit, now in his 30th season and the panelist with the longest memory of what GameDay used to be, who has said McAfee\u2019s arrival rescued him from growing tired of the job.<\/p>\n After the Cruz interview, Herbstreit claimed he didn\u2019t follow politics closely enough<\/a> to know why the crowd was booing, though he did commend Cruz for pushing through it. To Brewer, the fact that the person best equipped to read the lawn treated its message as background noise spoke to a larger problem. GameDay now serves the fans who show up at dawn alongside McAfee\u2019s audience, bettors, ESPN, and the politicians and conferences who see the set as a platform. When those interests clash, it\u2019s no longer obvious which one the show answers to first.<\/p>\n Brewer is hardly alone in wondering who GameDay is for anymore, as the show has weathered criticism over its politics, its narrow focus on the Big Ten and SEC, and its drift away from the playful spirit that defined the Lee Corso era.<\/p>\n Our Sean Keeley wrote in September<\/a> about college football fans falling out of love with Saturday pregame shows, mourning how the whimsy of the Corso years had given way to agenda-pushing, political detours and a take-it-or-leave-it posture toward critics. Last week, after McAfee shrugged\u00a0off the Sacramento State pick and Herbstreit wondered aloud whether Fresno State-Boise State even counted as a conference game, viewers\u00a0hammered the panel for its indifference<\/a> to\u00a0anything outside the Big Ten and SEC. And after a Texas crowd drowned out Cruz with boos and a \u201cTed you suck\u201d chant, Matt Yoder argued<\/a> that the show increasingly caters to its talent and its parent company ahead of the sport, particularly with Disney lobbying for the very bill<\/a> Cruz came to peddle.<\/p>\n Still, none of that has dented the bottom line. GameDay is fresh off its most-watched season ever; its audience is skewing younger and more female, and Brewer conceded the numbers are climbing again this fall.<\/p>\n On Saturday, amid McAfee\u2019s New York Times tirade, Herbstreit cited one of Lee Corso\u2019s many famous lines: \u201cWe\u2019re in the entertainment business, and college football is our vehicle.\u201d As long as viewership trends hold, ESPN has little reason to treat a Times column or a reader survey as more than social media noise, and McAfee\u2019s insistence that the show trades in entertainment also serves as the network\u2019s handiest rebuttal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As we\u2019ve learned at Awful Announcing, Pat McAfee often sees what\u2019s written about him. 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