Pat McAfee is getting upset, and even though he’s employed by ESPN, the former Indianapolis Colts punter turned sports media mogul has not shied away from addressing the situation head-on.
It all began with Aaron Rodgers’ controversial appearances on The Pat McAfee Show, where they dove into the Epstein list while linking other popular TV figures to an unflattering situation. Later, McAfee apologized for Rodgers’s comments, but the talk didn’t die down there.
Later on, reports of McAfee’s show bringing in low TV ratings emerged, but now he says those numbers were fake. In fact, McAfee is even saying that false information may have been leaked by a high-ranking ESPN employee who he believes is trying to sabotage him.
“There are folks actively trying to sabotage us from within ESPN. More specifically I believe Norby Williamson is the guy attempting to sabotage our program. (Williamson) is seemingly the only human that has information, and then somehow that information gets leaked and it’s wrong and then it sets a narrative of what our show is. And then are we just going to combat that from a rat every single time? Somebody tried to get ahead of our actual ratings release with wrong numbers 12 hours beforehand. That’s a sabotage attempt, and it’s been happening from some people who didn’t necessarily love the old addition of the Pat McAfee Show to the ESPN family””
Pat McAfee responding to critics
Norby Williamson is listed as the Executive Senior Vice President of Studio and Event Production at ESPN. He has overlooked all studio shows and live sporting events at the network since 2005.
Naturally, McAfee is very upset about his career getting toyed with, and as he’s shown, he’s not afraid to bite the hand that feeds him at ESPN.
Back in September, McAfee surprisingly accepted a five-year, $85 million deal to take his work from FanDuel to ESPN, giving him an even larger reach, where he’d now be on TV, in addition to YouTube and everywhere else. McAfee’s first year of the deal has included several highs and lows, but this recent public dispute is a whole new can of worms.
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