Pat McAfee says he’s committed to ESPN but not sorry for bashing exec

McAfee delivered his vote of confidence for ESPN after a week in which his show consumed the network in controversy. It began last week, when quarterback Aaron Rodgers seemed to suggest in a segment on McAfee’s show that late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel had ties to the serial abuser Jeffrey Epstein. By the end of the week, McAfee was on the air and dramatically accused Norby Williamson, a longtime ESPN executive and head of studio production, of “sabotaging his show.”

On Monday in Houston, McAfee said he did not regret his comments about Williamson but that he remained committed to ESPN.

“Now there are certainly people we do not like, and they do not like us and that’s how it’s going to be,” he said. “And I don’t take back anything that I said about said person, but the overall storyline about us and ESPN, I think people need to remember, we’re strong.”

The marriage between McAfee, the former punter turned YouTube star, and the corporate world of Disney has come under intense scrutiny over the last week. ESPN executive Mike Foss told The Washington Post last week that Rodgers’ comments about Kimmel were a “dumb and factually inaccurate joke” that should “never have happened.”

Kimmel, like McAfee, is a Disney employee, and he threatened legal action against Rodgers, which prompted ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro to intervene to smooth things. McAfee, on his show last week, said Rodgers was simply talking “s—.” But just as that brouhaha was dying down, McAfee ripped into Williamson, accusing him of sabotaging the show because of a story in the New York Post that highlighted McAfee’s lagging ratings on linear TV.

McAfee continued to fan the flames of the story Saturday by posting a famous clip from “Scarface,” in which title character Tony Montana says to diners at a white-table restaurant that they need bad guys like him who aren’t afraid to be what they want to be so they can feel better about themselves. ESPN issued a statement Saturday saying that it valued both Williamson and McAfee and that it would handle the matter internally, suggesting there would be no public punishment.

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McAfee highlighted his good relationships with other ESPN executives on the air Monday, including Pitaro, head of content Burke Magnus and Disney chairman Bob Iger. He did not mention Williamson, who has been a power broker at ESPN for nearly four decades, by name.

“There is a transition era, you know, between the old and the new. And the old don’t like what [the new are doing],” McAfee said, adding, “We all understand what the future looks like, there’s just some old hags that potentially don’t.”

Those comments will likely not sit well in some corners of ESPN’s Bristol, Conn., headquarters. But the fact that McAfee’s commitment to ESPN would even be in question suggests that the power dynamics are different here than in previous talent-network dustups at ESPN. ESPN signed McAfee to a reported $15 million a year contract over five years to bring his bro-ier and more casual style to ESPN — and, hopefully, younger viewers, too.

Foss told the Post last week that McAfee is vital to the network’s future and insisted that linear TV ratings are not as important as they once were, particularly in a future media ecosystem where ESPN is offered as a direct-to-consumer streaming app.