As ESPN is reportedly in talks to offer Pat McAfee $60 million a year, it’s worth taking a look how exactly we all got to this point.
I woke up on this Tuesday morning around 15 minutes ago to a slew of negative headlines, which is far from a unique experience for life in the 2020’s. Beyond all of the awful stories that have broader real-life implications, I noticed one piece that exemplifies that the things we love and enjoy are also getting worse at a rapid pace.
According to reporting from Andrew Marchand of The Athletic, ESPN is currently in talks with TV host and former Indianapolis Colts punter Pat McAfee for a new deal that could be worth more than $60 million a year, which would more than double the amount he makes now for The Pat McAfee Show and his role on College GameDay, among other ESPN responsibilities.
The potential new deal perhaps serves as the natural conclusion of McAfee’s meteoric rise through ESPN and the sports media ecosystem, one that was greatly facilitated by his start at Barstool Sports and the widespread legalization of sports betting throughout much of the U.S. that began in 2018.
Yet McAfee isn’t alone in his rise to prominence, as he has been joined by fellow loudmouths Dave Portnoy and Stephen A. Smith as inescapable voices throughout the sports media landscape, at the cost of countless talented journalists never seeing the light of day again.
McAfee’s style and appeal is quite obvious, even to someone like myself who has always been greatly irritated by it. He’s loud, unapologetic, wears a bro tank and isn’t afraid to cuss. His experience as an NFL veteran lends him credibility in some conversations. His animated persona honestly does play decently well in the high-octane College GameDay settings, which did at least lead to one truly hilarious moment where McAfee trolled a raucous crowd of Georgia Bulldogs fans.
While McAfee’s bait-and-switch to the Georgia faithful was objectively hysterical, it’s impossible to not notice comedian and somewhat right-wing adjacent Theo Von sitting next to McAfee in that moment – which serves as all the proof of how much McAfee and the adjacent “sports bro” persona has infiltrated mainstream sports media.
This is not something that happened overnight, as sports media was not a landscape that simply rewarded the loudest voices when I was growing up, watching ESPN on a near-daily basis from my middle school years in the late 2000’s through my college years in the late 2010’s.
While ESPN prepares to dole out a historic offer to McAfee after already handing Stephen A. Smith a $100 million contract that allows him to spew a slew of uninformed and misguided political takes on top of his uninformed and misguided sports takes, the network has also lost much more than it has gained in recent years.
Disregarding the steady stream of layoffs that continue to affect everyday workers throughout Disney that impact everything from parks to ESPN itself, the company has explicitly aimed its sports coverage towards loud, debate-oriented material, leaving the reporting and more personable shows behind in the graveyard.
Bob Ley’s incredible Outside the Lines, which often featured outstanding newsmagazine reporting of sports stories that expanded far beyond what happened on the field of play is now a distant memory, with Ley having retired in October 2019 and the show being off the air since August 2022.
Around the Horn, a light-hearted roundtable debate show that was a staple of my after-school diet for several years while highlighting some of the country’s finest sportswriters each day, aired its final episode in May 2025.
While ESPN’s portfolio remains solid when it comes to sports themselves, gearing up for a historic airing of the Super Bowl next season while being the only network to hold rights for all four major North American pro sports leagues, the type of content that drew me to ESPN as a child is long-gone.
In the process of getting to this point, ESPN has jettisoned an insane amount of on- and off-air talent, leaving a hodge-podge of hot-take bozos such as McAfee, Smith and Kendrick Perkins while having bid farewell to Jalen Rose, Suzy Kolber, Jeff Van Gundy and Max Kellerman, among many others.
What is perhaps the most bewildering about all of this is the fact that McAfee’s tenure has not been this perfect, unbelievable showing of a rising star in sports media. Rather, it’s been a tale of a loud, obnoxious man who believes he’s too popular and paid too much to ever be held accountable.
Known for being close with Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback and conspiracy theorist Aaron Rodgers (who unfortunately still dictates which NFL games I see in Chico, Rodgers’ hometown), McAfee on numerous occasions failed to push back as Rodgers regurgitated anti-vaccine misinformation on his show, appearing to be a lot more like Rodgers’ drinking bro than a journalist conducting anything like an interview.
McAfee eventually vowed to distance himself from Rodgers after the latter suggested in January 2024 that ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel was going to appear in the Jeffrey Epstein files, pitting two of Disney’s most visible employees directly against each other. While this controversy faded from the public eye quickly, it was amusing to see ESPN let McAfee try to explain his way out of it, when former employees were never given such an opportunity.
It’s also worth noting that Aaron Rodgers was completely silent when names in the Jeffrey Epstein files were revealed, suggesting that maybe, just maybe, he’s a conspiracy-pilled right-winger who doesn’t actually give a shit what the truth is.
The freedom of Smith and McAfee to say whatever the fuck they want about politics or current events greatly differs in comparison to how former host Jemele Hill was treated in 2017, when she (accurately) described President Donald Trump as a white supremacist in a series of tweets.
After being reprimanded, Hill was suspended for two weeks the next month after suggesting fans upset with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ threat to bench national anthem protesters should boycott advertisers who back the franchise. Within a year, she was out of ESPN for good.
This should absolutely be compared to how ESPN reacted when Pat McAfee made a sexual college campus rumor about an 18-year-old University of Mississippi freshman national news during NFL Draft coverage in 2025.
During a live hit with Adam Schefter, ESPN’s lead NFL insider, McAfee inexplicably brought up what was nothing more than a rumor he came across on social media – when the two were supposed to be discussing prospects in the NFL Draft.
McAfee asks Schefter if he’s heard about “Ole Miss,” before adding that there was a “ménage à trois” that captured the internet’s attention.
McAfee tries to explain the completely unrelated rumor to Schefter, saying that a member of the Kappa Delta sorority, may I remind everyone, an 18-year-old college freshman, cheated on an “Ole Miss frat bro” with her boyfriend’s dad. This is happening on the air, on ESPN, weeks ahead of the NFL Draft, in a conversation with the network’s NFL insider!
Completely blindsided by the dialogue, Schefter asks, “So where is Jaxson Dart in all of this?”, referencing the then-Ole Miss quarterback’s draft prospects.
Behind this definitionally meathead conversation was the shattering of privacy for a young woman who was simply trying to live her life as a normal college freshman – discovering the balance of freedom and responsibility while figuring out your identity and what you want to do with your life. For Mary Kate Cornett, she became the butt of a nationwide joke because a national TV personality thought false sexual rumors were topical to the NFL Draft.
After McAfee lent credence to the rumor, Cornett’s life was flipped upside down, according to reporting from The Athletic. Despite removing her name from her dorm room, she continued to receive revolting messages under her door. She was switched to emergency housing and all online classes and continued to receive a flood of vile texts and mentions across social media platforms.
While it’s nothing more than a joking manner and a way to stir the pot for a few more bucks to Pat McAfee, it was a life-changing rumor for Mary Kate Cornett and her family – one that they’ll be connected to in one way or another for as long as they live.
As far as accountability? Just a public apology a few months later after McAfee said he privately met with Cornett and her family, who considered the matter “settled to each party’s satisfaction” after previous talks of a potential lawsuit.
Beyond the apology, there was no accountability or consequences from ESPN itself, unless you consider talks to potentially double his salary just over a year later one of the consequences.
McAfee’s entrenchment at ESPN is nothing more than an emphatic endorsement of McAfee’s brand of media – being loud and obnoxious while holding a hint of contempt towards the way things were done in the past. It’s a demonstration of “the boys” being back in charge now, and those that don’t like it that way are simply “triggered.”
I think there’s a hint of credence behind the sports media of yesterday being too buttoned-up and rigid when sports are meant to be a fun way to escape from the monotony of everyday life. I personally want to see sports media personalities visibly having fun doing their jobs.
But that doesn’t change the fact that working in sports media means you still carry all the responsibilities of a journalist – the job is to objectively report information far and above anything else, a job that remains part of the description even when it’s mixed in with laid-back, bro-filled conversations that feel like they could be going on in someone’s garage over a six-pack of Coors Light.
With McAfee looking at his pay skyrocketing at ESPN, we see media networks doubling down on this brand of sports – one that comes off as brash, cocky and unforgiving, while predominantly online outlets such as Jomboy Media and Secret Base offer a much more inviting approach with aims to appeal to an audience beyond the typical sports fan.
If ESPN was truly about recouping all of the losses Disney has taken on company-wide, they also would adopt a friendlier approach that could broaden the horizon of what kind of viewers would tune into the network when they’re not airing live sports. But this isn’t about what garners the most viewers or guarantees the most growth.
It’s about anticipatory obedience, and playing it safe to appeal to an elite class that is firmly entrenched with the unapologetically fascist regime currently at the helm in the United States. Despite President Trump’s disapproval ratings soaring to upwards of 60%, the shot-callers of news and sports media are in lockstep with the regime.
To those shot-callers, Pat McAfee represents what they want to see more of in America – loud, cocky men who have never taken accountability for a damn thing in their whole lives. In other words, taking a page right out of the president’s book.
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