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Conspiracy theories are abound on Tuesday after some viewers mysteriously lost their ESPN feed as Aaron Rodgers made a joke about vaccines during his weekly segment on the Pat McAfee Show.
The incident in question occurred early in the segment as Rodgers apologized to McAfee and co-host AJ Hawk for not wearing a Halloween costume.
Maybe ESPN had enough of Aaron Rodgers' vax commentary? pic.twitter.com/jNCFwVDJbh
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) October 31, 2023
“I had my costume on last night but I couldn’t wear it today,” Rodgers says before McAfee and Hawk ask what it was.
McAfee then asks if it was a vaccine, a doctor or a scientist, to which Rogers replies “it was a spike protein.”
That’s when the audio first cut out for viewers, only for the video feed to cut out shortly thereafter.
“Everything is going great with the Pat McAfee/ESPN relationship. Just great,” one viewer tweeted.
“Maybe if ESPN cared they could tell the host of the show to stop bringing it up? Rodgers a dork but literally didn’t mention it once in this clip,” said another.
But as it turns out, ESPN may not have been involved at all.
Other viewers claimed the show did not cut out for them, and that the glitch may have just been an issue with a specific cable provider.
McAfee later confirmed that this was the case and took a shot at Twitter aggregators who claimed otherwise.
“Allegedly, we are being told now that when Aaron started to talking about the vaccine, they decided to shut the show down,” McAfee joked.
They then confirmed that it was just one provider.
McAfee then posted a graphic stating that “the opinions expressed on this show do not necessarily reflect the the beliefs of their peers, their boss, or ESPN.”
So there you have it folks.
Much ado about nothing.
But for one brief moment, it appeared that Aaron Rodgers had broken ESPN.