There he is, a future President of the United States, wearing a backwards white cap and leaning over with a greenish wristband to shake hands with Donald Trump. Their meeting was not a shock, because Pat McAfee is the only man on Earth who manages more time on television and social media than Trump.
America does not want to be overexposed to a former football player, especially one who been ordained by ESPN to be the most zealously-paid sportscaster ever. In truth, as our fun and games slide into a toilet-like condition, what people need is a badass who can figure out Mark Walter and Kawhi Leonard and Jeanie Buss and Gianni Infantino and gambling and tanking and the skyrocketing of tickets.
Instead, we get McAfee, who says he is a “conversationalist” who knows he isn’t practicing journalism. In fact, he makes fun of those who pursue honesty, which is exactly the softness ESPN wants as it does hearty business with the NFL. Howard Cosell would have laughed at him. Bob Costas probably does, though he never would say it. Almost everyone else in sports media — except me and a few others — thinks McAfee is the ruler. Never will he piss anyone off, except Mary Kate Cornett, who threatened a lawsuit when he believed a false internet rumor.
So entrenched is McAfee in Bristol, he can do nothing wrong. That’s why he’ll sign a deal for $65 million a year, which is insanity multiplied by derangement because, um, who else would sign him anyway? The network was finishing a tribute to ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen, who died Tuesday, when important words suddenly stopped on Stephen A. Smith’s “First Take.” The start of McAfee’s show cut off the ode to a man who allowed TV sports to run full-time.
“What happened at the beginning of the show was called TV magic,” McAfee tried to explain Wednesday. “Somehow, one linear channel can have something live in New York City … and then somehow, this Thunderdome out in the middle of Indianapolis, Indiana can somehow just kinda go on at the same time. There’s like a little bit of a snap of a finger and it happens.
“Like, the next show, they don’t even hear the countdown at the other place. They don’t even know those people at the other place. We’ve missed some hard outs in the past, I think many people have, but it’s always on us. It is not on the next people. So you can certainly utilize it as a situation to call me a piece of (expletive) again, but I don’t think I had anything to do with it.”
We’ll call him what we want because McAfee changed ESPN programming into junk we don’t remotely recognize. The reason he is popular for guests, contrary to what network executive Burke Magnus claims, involves his keen approval to let them run the interviews. Anytime Aaron Rodgers shows up and rips the world — including ESPN — he rambles on until he’s done. The basics are covered, as McAfee looks like an ex-jock, stays in shape with weights, talks with a youthful jargon, gambles on sports and adores UFC. In the hallways of Connecticut, he rarely shows up but has changed the culture into Trump Country. Imagine.
Remember when I departed “Around The Horn,” the daily program that had higher ratings in our prime than McAfee or Smith have now? John Skipper, the president, ordered a certain wokeness among panelists. Jemele Hill led the charge, and when she referred to Trump as a “white supremacist,” I realized whatever we had built for eight years — from the very first show — was long gone. Ratings dropped because audiences were split. Eventually, the show was canceled. All it took was McAfee to sway chairman Jimmy Pitaro and Magnus. He rocked them.
Why? Does anyone really know? He even released a studio album, “The Diary of a Polarizing Figure,” with “Dookie” as the debut single. It’s a ripoff of Green Day.
As we enter a new football season, prepare for McAfee as the star of the NFL and college football. Both. He will perform an alt-cast on “Monday Night Football,” with the ManningCast remaining as a secondary program. He also will appear on “Monday Night Countdown,” with Jason Kelce, Marcus Spears and Jason McCourty. On Saturdays, he appears as usual on “College Game Day.” At Super Bowl LXI, he will host a Field Pass show so people can flip away from Joe Buck and Troy Aikman.
Never was I comfortable with ESPN as a political outlet. But I am not comfortable with ESPN as merely a McAfee outlet. Pitaro will give him $65 million a year and is getting rid of important personnel. Smith remains on board at about $20 million a year. He will turn 59 in October. Of course, when he appeared on Barrett Media’s Audio Summit, he wondered why a white man is favored by management.
“First of all, I’m happy for him. He’s earned it, and I truly mean that. I do believe, even though it makes people uncomfortable — as a Black man, that I don’t believe that’s an opportunity that would ever come to us first,” Smith said.
The reason Smith dominated at ESPN is because, well, he’s Black. Some of us who are white were suppressed on the airwaves. Every time I went after an owner or a commissioner, I would be muted by the host. He worked for a producer who worked for the big boss. Yet Stephen A. has been allowed to rip anyone for any reason. He is only No. 2 at the moment.
See how it works? In 2026, Pitaro and Magnus have decided McAfee relates to Americans. In 2036, when he is 49, the same sportscaster will run for President — Smith might do the same soon — as a lifelong friend of Donald Trump.
He might wear the same backwards white cap.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host.
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