Late into his first season on ESPN’s College GameDay, Pat McAfee reacted to a negative-skewing poll of the program’s viewers in a way that cast doubt on whether he’d be back the following year, tweeting in part that we’ll “see what the future holds.”
By late December, he’d committed to a return to the iconic college football pregame show with Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard, Lee Corso, and ultimately, legendary coach Nick Saban.
In 2024, GameDay averaged 2.2 million viewers, the most in the show’s 38-year history despite coming in the era of cord-cutting, albeit with the benefit of out-of-home viewership. There were marked gains in the elusive younger demographics.
McAfee is a pied piper of college-age young men and recent graduates, and every entity involved with sports is strategizing on how to replenish this well in an age where content and attention are so fragmented.
In a conversation with Front Office Sports, ESPN president of content Burke Magnus was effusive in his praise of how McAfee delivers the young demo.
“I don’t know about galvanizing college students to show up in person for the show—the crowds seemed enormous across the board, but that’s hard to quantify. I would credit Pat and his appeal with the college-aged fan,” Magnus said.
“But the easiest way to quantify it is we were up 34 percent year over year in the 18-to-24 demo. That just doesn’t happen in our business without something remarkable. To me, that’s the appeal of Pat. I have kids who are 23 and 25. He’s the guy. He’s the voice of their generation and their fandom. He represents them. He’s the guy like Chris Berman was for me.”
Viewership in the 18-to-34 demographic was also up double digits at 14 percent compared to 2023.
The chemistry on the show was noticeably excellent. Rece Davis is a gold-standard host at facilitating among all of the analysts. Herbstreit and Howard are stalwarts of the show and have continued to keep it fresh. When Corso, 89, is present, it is evident that everybody has a profound reverence for him.
Furthermore, McAfee has been able to cultivate something resembling a nephew-uncle relationship with immortal football men like Bill Belichick (on McAfee’s eponymous talk show) and Saban.
“It was a remarkable year in a lot of ways,” Magnus said.
“Much of it had to do with really finding the absolute perfect chemistry between the team. I give a lot of that credit to Pat and to Coach Saban and to Rece as the ringleader of this crew. The big difference this year was the introduction of Coach Saban. He and Pat forged this fun and unique relationship. Pat had this way of dragging Coach out of his shell. It made Coach more comfortable that Pat was in the center square.”
In addition to his talk show and GameDay, McAfee also is a color commentator for WWE’s Raw on Netflix during the football offseason.
In the conversation, Magnus also pointed to a couple of extra elements McAfee brought to the table.
“Pat elevated his game in unbelievable ways with two things that I now feel like are franchise elements of a franchise show: (1) His opening monologue about the campus where they are with the traditions and songs and chants, and (2) the field-goal kicking contest which was 100 percent Pat’s idea and has become every bit as anticipated, in my opinion, as Corso’s headgear bit has been over the years,” Magnus said.
“It was a fantastic season.”
