There was minimal blowback to Pat McAfee slurring Caitlin Clark, albeit in oddly complimentary fashion, on his ESPN TV show Monday.
McAfee apologized but didn’t mean it. That was confirmed by him humorously referencing what he had said on WWE’s “Monday Night Raw.”
The Plum native isn’t sorry about anything he says. Not one thing. He believes he’s reinvented sports broadcasting.
That’s because he has. He reinvented it and owns it. He might as well own ESPN. He walks all over the Worldwide Leader. Not many at ESPN had more power than Norby Williamson. McAfee ran him off.
The Caitlin Clark remark is another reminder that McAfee is bulletproof. He wallows in that. He loves testing it.
McAfee is at the forefront of what podcaster Bill Simmons calls “Dukes of Hazzard live,” sports talk aimed at the lowest common denominator. (I thought I was doing that. Turns out there’s an even lower common denominator.)
McAfee’s show is aimed at the bros. They’re easy to identify. They say “bro” a lot, just like McAfee and his crew.
Most content is aimed at drawing a laugh. Most of it isn’t funny but succeeds anyway. Bros are easily amused.
McAfee’s crew are his high school buddies and ex-NFL player A.J. Hawk. (No women.) It’s amateur hour, sometimes in a good way. Hawk is reminiscent of one of those giant silent heads on Easter Island.
They want to be friends with the athletes. Very rarely are athletes criticized. That, combined with McAfee’s cool factor, is why big-name athletes come on the show. They won’t ever face a hard question.
There’s method to that madness. You get big names on the show in a relaxed atmosphere, one will occasionally babble something newsworthy. If they don’t, everybody still remembers that a big name appeared.
McAfee is spread very thin: WWE, “College GameDay,” etc. It’s hard to imagine him preparing a lot for anything. You need an attention span to do that. McAfee works hard at being McAfee. He blurts a lot, which draws both fire and interest.
McAfee’s show is everything ESPN shouldn’t want.
Stupid, offensive things are said constantly. The swear jar gets filled to the brim, which may be harmless but is unprofessional. McAfee’s gang includes few women or people of color. (I don’t think, say, Jemele Hill will be appearing anytime soon.) The content is meh. It’s two hours of nonstop yelling and mugging, a perfect segue from Stephen A. Smith prior. (That’s another column.)
By the way, McAfee loses nearly half of Smith’s audience. Not good, but it’s said that McAfee’s viewers on YouTube compensate. I’m not sure advertisers on ESPN feel that way.
ESPN washes its hands of McAfee’s indiscretions by pointing out that McAfee owns the show and has creative control, with ESPN merely leasing. That’s feeble excuse-making. ESPN chooses to air the show. It’s their network.
ESPN gave us the brilliance of Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick. ESPN still airs the best show of its type, “Pardon the Interruption” with Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon.
Scott Van Pelt is a worthy successor to all of that. McAfee isn’t.
But it works. That’s all that matters now in sports media. That’s the revolution. Do people watch? It doesn’t have to be good and doesn’t matter if it pointedly isn’t.
This isn’t a criticism of McAfee. He’s found his niche.
I’m certainly not jealous. You don’t get jealous at 63. Your dreams are long since dead.
But it’s sad because McAfee’s show had a chance to become something really cutting edge. McAfee has the intelligence, charisma and verbosity to make his show better. To evolve.
Once McAfee had his audience hooked, he could have made the show anything he wanted. He chose more of the same.
Wanting to be friends with the athletes really figures in. McAfee wants to be part of the scene, not just looking in at the scene. It’s a punter’s dream.
McAfee will eventually leave ESPN. He’ll get sick of ESPN, or ESPN will tire of him.
McAfee loves attention, and the surest way to get that is conflict. That’s why he causes it all the time. Conflict is McAfee’s home field.
No matter what happens, McAfee has more than enough money. He’s won.
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McAfee is very smart. I wonder if he’s smart enough to look back someday and wonder if he should have done more than say “bro” a lot. Because the show he does won’t be remembered, except perhaps for how it ultimately ends.