{"id":899005,"date":"2026-10-29T18:02:26","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T18:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/899005\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T18:02:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T18:02:26","slug":"everybody-hates-pat-is-a-cabal-of-college-kids-really-trying-to-bring-down-espns-star-meathead-us-sports-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/899005\/","title":{"rendered":"Everybody hates Pat: is a cabal of college kids really trying to bring down ESPN\u2019s star meathead? | US sports media"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was all shaping up to be a golden year for Pat McAfee. The man who landed a five-year, $85m deal in 2023 to take The Pat McAfee Show to ESPN had cemented himself as the star attraction of the sports broadcaster\u2019s bold new era of stunts, stupidity and memebrain swill<\/a>. His persistently honking presence on the set of ESPN\u2019s College GameDay had helped push ratings to new heights. ESPN executives were so impressed with McAfee they were reportedly<\/a> in negotiations to award him a new contract worth between $60m and $65m a year; one even went so far as to describe<\/a> him as a \u201cgenerational\u201d media talent.<\/p>\n

Then, over the weekend, disaster struck. A handful of college kids attacked him online ahead of his appearance with College GameDay at the University of Utah. Well, \u201cattacked\u201d is maybe overstating things: they made a few mild jokes at his expense<\/a>. But it was all too much for ESPN\u2019s brightest blimp. Suddenly, McAfee\u2019s world came crashing down. His initial reaction, to be fair, was mild: \u201cThe university\u2019s Instagram account posted something talking a little trash about me last night, which I certainly love,\u201d he said ahead of the Utes\u2019 clash with the Houston Cougars last week.<\/p>\n

But by Monday the narrative had changed. On his eponymous show, McAfee said he had \u201cnever felt more uncomfortable\u201d than he did on the Utah campus, alluding to the assassination of Charlie Kirk<\/a> as a reason for his unease: \u201cI thought to myself: Has anything really scary happened at, like, a college gathering in the state of Utah recently? Do you think we should be amplifying reasons for why people hate my guts as a university? I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pat McAfee flashes Texas Tech\u2019s Guns Up gesture during ESPN\u2019s College GameDay in Lubbock, Texas, last November. His boisterous, crowd-baiting antics have become a fixture of the program, though he has proved less enthusiastic about being on the receiving end of the joke. Photograph: John E Moore III\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Well, Pat, neither do I. To read this comically melodramatic retelling of his time at Utah you might assume last week\u2019s College GameDay was uncommonly vicious and antagonistic. Instead, it was the usual chop-up of hype, half-assed technical analysis and shouting, in which McAfee supplied his standard mix of meandering rants and basic crowd work and the gathered masses, in turn, responded with cheers and (good-natured) boos as expected. The video<\/a> that McAfee implied had him fearing for his life, posted to the university\u2019s Instagram and TikTok accounts, involved a handful of students poking very light fun at the ESPN host for ripping off his shirt on set (which he does often<\/a>) and spouting \u201ccorny\u201d lines in place of real analysis (ditto); one of McAfee\u2019s would-be assassins even emphasized that \u201cwe love you bro\u201d as he implored McAfee to \u201ckeep the shirt on\u201d.<\/p>\n

double quotation markFigures like McAfee drag us all back into the frathouse, the kegger, the swamp, and now they won\u2019t even let us joke about it<\/p>\n

The wokes and the leftists are always the most precious snowflakes on earth until some kid does a mild impersonation of Pat McAfee ripping his top open; when that happens it\u2019s a federal emergency and the national guard needs to be called in to set things right. Any more of this mild banter from the brutes and ingrates of the American undergraduate population and McAfee will be calling his buddy Donald Trump<\/a> to request Secret Service protection.<\/p>\n

Even more bizarre than McAfee\u2019s amazingly thin-skinned overreaction to this absolute non-event is how seriously<\/a> his claims of imminent danger to his life (stemming, once again, from a video in which a few students say they don\u2019t want to see McAfee\u2019s naked torso) have been taken by those around him. The school published a groveling apology<\/a> for its actions and deleted the offending video from its social media channels, while ESPN issued a statement of support for McAfee and \u201cthe very real and valid concerns he has around safety and security\u201d.<\/p>\n

Pat McAfee alongside Donald Trump at the Patriot Games in Ohio in August. The ESPN star has emerged as one of the most prominent figures in a new generation of rightwing sports personalities aligned with the president. Photograph: Anna Moneymaker\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

During his ascent at ESPN, McAfee has perfected all the attributes of a WWE-style heel \u2013 the gift for offense, the shirtlessness, the penchant for writhing on the ground like an upturned beetle<\/a> \u2013 with the exception of one: he absolutely cannot stand it when he\u2019s the butt of the joke. The man is a machine at whipping a crowd into a hostile frenzy then runs in fright the moment the first boos hit his ears. McAfee is perhaps the leading light of the rightwing sports bros who\u2019ve come to prominence<\/a> in the age of Trump: these men love sports, love their country<\/a>, love their president, and are unsure what to make of women. Trump himself made his debut appearance<\/a> on The Pat McAfee Show late last year, and over this summer McAfee was on hand to lend some primetime meat to the inaugural Patriot Games<\/a>, the president\u2019s Hitlerian exercise in uplift for the white youth of America.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s perhaps no surprise, then, that McAfee has absorbed completely the personality traits of the president: to the casual misogyny, the constant moaning about \u201cwoke\u201d, the boorishness and the egomania can now be added McAfee\u2019s Trumpian inability to take a joke or any kind of criticism, however mild or well-intentioned; in the deranged McAfee worldview it now seems even college kids, a big part of College GameDay\u2019s own audience, are part of the shadowy network of villainy working to bring ESPN\u2019s star beetroot down. Whether it\u2019s punching across at critical media outlets or punching down at fans who don\u2019t like the kind of shirt-ripping frattiness he\u2019s introduced to College GameDay, McAfee never seems more engaged in his work than when snarling<\/a> about the \u201crats\u201d, \u201cmarks\u201d, \u201closers\u201d and \u201cpuppets\u201d snapping at his feet.<\/p>\n

It cannot be emphasized too much how stupid and overblown this whole concocted controversy is. What is really going on here? Is this all reflective of a desire for attention on McAfee\u2019s part, another demonstration of his continuous need to make everything \u2013 in sport, on TV, in culture at large \u2013 About Him? Or is ESPN so heavily degraded and virality-brained now, so in thrall to the Magaverse<\/a> and its perverse understanding of the world, that the empty suits who run the place genuinely feel the operation will collapse without a happy McAfee \u2013 placated and kept safe from the everyday terrorists roving the college campuses of America \u2013 at its core?<\/p>\n

ESPN personalities Stephen A Smith and Pat McAfee before Monday\u2019s Cowboys-Eagles game in Philadelphia. McAfee\u2019s rise has come to symbolize the network\u2019s embrace of personality-driven spectacle over traditional sports analysis. Photograph: Mitchell Leff\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s a bit of both. As Soft Pat\u2019s star at ESPN has risen and he\u2019s been handed more prestigious on-air assignments<\/a>, the statements emanating from the C-suite hailing his \u201cgenerational\u201d and otherworldly talent have become more and more ludicrous; amid reports of his monster new contract, McAfee is now involved in Monday Night Football and there\u2019s talk of potentially using his Super Bowl alt-cast for even higher honors on screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cPat can do whatever he wants,\u201d ESPN executive vice-president Mike Foss recently mused<\/a>, and there\u2019s a real sense that the whole network is under the spell of McAfee\u2019s bare breast, that \u2013 if only as a cultural project \u2013 the erstwhile \u201cWorldwide Leader in Sports\u201d now belongs to McAfee. The wholesale enrollment of a once-proud network into the cult of McAfee does not reflect the man\u2019s talent: he\u2019s good for ratings, sure, but any old rightwing purplehead could curl up into a topless ball, screeching, and do what he does. Instead, it\u2019s a sign of the profound confusion that has gripped traditional media in the post-cordcutting era of vertical video and endless slop. Nothing else works, seems to be the thinking; maybe this idiot will.<\/p>\n

In another context, or another era, the TV triumph of the outcast, the oddball, the unlikely star might have heralded a deepening of the culture, a growing sophistication in our collective understanding of what it takes to be appealing as a popular media talent. But so much of what McAfee represents is the kind of meatheaded insensitivity that sports broadcasting \u2013 with its polish and professionalism \u2013 was historically designed to supersede, especially at a place like ESPN<\/a>. Figures like McAfee drag us all back into the frathouse, the kegger, the swamp, and now they won\u2019t even let us joke about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was all shaping up to be a golden year for Pat McAfee. The man who landed a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":899006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-899005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/899006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}