Pat McAfee said his comments blasting an ESPN executive were a warning shot.
The radio show host and former NFL punter went on the ‘All the Smoke’ podcast with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson and explained previous comments he made on his own platform, ‘The Pat McAfee Show.’ In January, McAfee said Norby Williamson, ESPN’s executive editor and head of event and studio production, was ‘attempting to sabotage our program.’
‘I thought that was a warning shot to that guy,’ McAfee said in a clip posted on ‘All the Smoke’s X account, formerly Twitter, on Thursday. ‘… I guess a lot of people have a lot of fear of him. I do not. That guy left me sitting in his office for 45 minutes, no-showed me when I was supposed to have a meeting with him. … He also banned all my friends from coming on my show. There was a ban of ESPN talent on my show on YouTube that came directly from him.’
McAfee’s show became popular on YouTube before ESPN licensed it, positioning it to replace the noon time slot for ‘SportsCenter.’ That’s when McAfee said he noticed tension from within the company. There was also friction after Aaron Rodgers used his weekly spot on the program to blast Jimmy Kimmel, speculating that the comedian was among those allegedly involved in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
‘There became like a war almost from behind scenes from ‘SportsCenter’ people and people that had been at ESPN a long time against us coming in and taking their jobs and all this other (expletive),’ he said. ‘I didn’t see it like that. We were like pumped we made it to the big leagues. Hey I’m pumped we’re on the worldwide leader. That’s how I viewed it. … Immediately, it’s like, ‘This guy sucks. This guys’s ruining ESPN.’ It’s not coming from people outside ESPN, it’s coming from people within ESPN and I did not expect that at all. So I’m immediately like okay, we’re at war. If that’s what we’re doing, we’re at war.
‘And then once you start learning about how (expletive) is going behind scenes, things that are being said to people, things that are being leaked, the timing in which they’re being leaked, it’s like, oh, they’re trying to kill me. They’re trying to make our show impossible to advertise with, they’re trying to make sure people don’t watch our show. As I started learning that, I’m like, alright, I don’t know how this has gone in the past with other people, but this particular white trash kid from Pittsburgh, hey suits, this ain’t, this is not how this is gonna go.’
McAfee said he didn’t appreciate the media coverage of his initial comments directed toward Williamson that said he was calling out his ‘boss.’ McAfee said he views himself as an equal to Williamson and reports to ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro and Disney CEO Bob Iger. Disney owns ESPN.
‘I’m the executive producer of my show,’ McAfee said. ‘I report directly to Jimmy and Bob. I’m not really viewing anybody, like I saw everybody, ‘Pat calls out his boss.’ I don’t got a (expletive) boss. We talking Jimmy Pataro or Bob Iger, is that who we’re talking about? ‘Cause those are people that could technically be described as my boss.’
McAfee expresses regret for how big his comments got, especially that Pitaro and ESPN’s head of content Burke Magnus were caught up in the controversy.
‘I did not expect the backlash afterwards,’ he said. ‘People were attacking Burke because it made him look sloppy ’cause it’s inside the building. People were attacking Jimmy because it looks sloppy. And that was something that I did not think about. I was very apologetic about. I didn’t mean to take down my allies, to make allies look bad in the whole thing.
‘But I genuinely did not expect it to get as big as it did because I didn’t think I said anything that was that crazy. I’m a pretty good talker, I’m a pretty good promo cutter. Like if I really wanted to saw (expletive) down, I thought I could have done it in a much bigger way and I did not. So I was actually pretty proud of myself. I was like, look at me. I’m an adult. And then it got loud.’
