The mercurial Pat McAfee has managed to befuddle his ESPN colleagues once again.
The prevailing mood inside ESPN was confusion after McAfee publicly complained it’s become virtually “impossible” to book the network’s NBA talent for his weekday afternoon show.
In a post on Twitter/X Wednesday, McAfee offered to pay outside NBA experts to appear on his show, which he licenses to ESPN via an eye-popping five-year, $85 million deal.
“I need an NBA expert(s) for the progrum… not everyday.. just someone to FaceTime periodically thru the season. I will pay, because I pay everybody for their contributions to our show,” McAfee tweeted on Wednesday
“Obviously.. when licensing our show thru ESPN, we thought it’d be easy to get NBA folks from the ESPN roster.. That has not been the case…The @ESPNNBA crew has been rather impossible to work with due to their daily scheduling during season.. afternoons are TOUGH for the entire group. Sooooo…Which ex-NBA players do you think would be a great representative of The Association on our dumbass show? Thanks again. Cheers.”
Unsurprisingly, ESPN declined to comment on their resident bad boy. But I asked a couple of my sources about McAfee’s tweet. Their reaction: Say what?
“Nobody knows what McAfee’s talking about,” one source told me. “Makes no sense—but that’s Pat…” sighed another.
I’m sure McAfee has his reasons for tweaking executives in Bristol, who gave him wide latitude after he dispatched feared corporate power player Norby Williamson, who had been the network’s ultimate survivor for 40 years. Maybe an ESPN personality was on a plane one day and left Pat and the boys hanging on the line? But this story doesn’t add up in my book.
ESPN hired Shams Charania to replace the retired Adrian Wojnarowski as its lead NBA reporter. McAfee publicly campaigned for Charania—a longtime contributor to his show—arguing he was the only choice. You know what? McAfee was spot-on: Charania is already proving he’s a great fit after a few weeks on the job. But you could argue one reason why ESPN hired the 30-year-old insider was to keep one of its biggest stars happy.
It’s also a reach to argue ESPN doesn’t make its talent available enough for its own TV/radio shows. In fact, the reverse is true. ESPN is famous, or infamous, for forcing its talent to go through the “car wash” of studio shows such as Get Up, First Take, SportsCenter, and NBA Today. They then use that firehose to spray their news and opinions across the sports media landscape.
The bottom line: If you pocket Disney’s coin as a front-facing talent, you better be ready to go on the air suited and booted at a moment’s notice. In fact, ESPN president of content Burke Magnus tried to shoot down the four-letter network’s reputation for over-using its talent during his recruiting pitch to Charles Barkley at our live ‘Tuned In’ sports media summit in New York last month.
This is an odd time for McAfee to rock the boat. He should be riding high. To me, his hilarious field-goal segment on College GameDay has become one of the best things on sports TV. Driven by McAfee’s star power, College GameDay is off to its best start ever, averaging 2.2 million viewers through Week 7, up 9% from the same point last season.
Meanwhile, McAfee’s eponymous show just had its most-watched episode ever. An episode featuring his weekly interview with Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers racked up 50 million views across various platforms one day earlier this month, according to the network.
So why is McAfee speaking out again? Maybe he’s trying to send a message that he’s more independent than other ESPN talents who are mere employees. He’s done it before.
But I think it’s simply McAfee being McAfee. He shoots from the hip. He doesn’t have an off button; he never has. Don’t forget, McAfee has the ear of Magnus, ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro and even Disney CEO Bob Iger. Like Michael Jordan, normal rules don’t apply to him. Playing by his own rules has gotten McAfee very far, very fast in his short media career. Why should he change now?
