Julia Hansen/Iowa City Press-Citizen / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Pat McAfee compared himself to Charlie Kirk
One of the students in the harmless University of Utah video that made Pat McAfee fear for his life has spoken out. The student is the one who literally said “Pat, we love you,” in the video.
The Pat McAfee show, not his eponymous radio show, but the self-dramatization of his own life, made its latest stop in Utah over the weekend as College GameDay was at the University of Utah campus for the school’s ranked matchup against Houston (Utah won 21-13). McAfee couldn’t wait to leave after the university posted a playful video ribbing the former Indianapolis Colts punter.
“Did not enjoy the University of Utah. You know why I didn’t like it? Right before I go out there, I see the University of Utah’s Instagram page. The University’s! They put out a video asking students to do an impression of Pat McAfee. One kid goes, ‘he’s corny.’ Another kid calls me ‘creepy!’” McAfee said on Monday.
“I’m walking in front of thousands of these people. This is how the University feels about me? That’s an uncomfortable feeling. I’m getting a lot of shrapnel from a lot of places. The University is putting this out?! That is something I had never experienced in my entire life so it kind of set me off a little bit. It made me feel a little bit mute. It made me feel a little bit weird,” he continued.
“And then I thought to myself, ‘Has anything really scary happened at a college gathering in the state of Utah recently?’ Do you think we should be amplifying reasons for why people hate my guts as a University?! I don’t know! The University gaslighting some of it right as I go out there to talk about your school, especially after what happened about 40 miles south a little bit over a year ago, I did not enjoy that. I was very uncomfortable.”
BTW, this is the video the University of Utah put out that Pat took offense to.
Holy Charmin soft… https://t.co/Rt9gVdrKD1
— College Sports Only (@CSOonX) October 26, 2026
Student in University of Utah’s video about Pat McAfee speaks out; sports world reckons with former Colts punter invoking Charlie Kirk
One of the Utah students in the video — the one who literally told McAfee that he loved him — took to social media to share some photos of the day, apologize to ESPN’s $60M/year network star, and remind him it was just a joke.
Go Utes 😭 College gameday was great, #Utenation
Sorry Pat about what we said, It was just a joke bro 😭 https://t.co/3ZiX2oew2n
— Devon4heisman (@LoganSpackax1p) October 27, 2026
To be fair to McAfee, the nature of the video does seem to be subjective, and its level of maliciousness seems to be in the eye of the beholder. A fellow writer at BroBible, for example, classified the content as “hateful rhetoric.”
Running the tape back, it’s difficult to discern what exactly about it is “hateful,” which is defined as “causing, deserving, or filled with strong dislike, malice, or intense hostility.” So, let’s try to remove subjective feelings and aim for objective fact.
The host of the video asks the college kids — no older than 22 years old — to give her their best Pat McAfee “impression,” which, according to Cambridge, is “an idea or opinion of what something or someone is like.” Some famous impersonators include Jim Carrey, Jay Pharoah, Frank Caliendo, Bill Hader, and Matt Friend. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who called their brand of comedy “hateful.”
“He’s gonna say a corny line; he’s gonna be like, ‘Houston, we got a problem. Give me the Utah Utes!'” the first student said.
The second group of college-aged kids didn’t say anything at all — they were just yelling.
“I would actually spend my money on the odds of Pat ripping his shirt off this morning,” a second quipped.
“Bro, Pat, we love you, bro, but keep the shirt on; no one’s trying to see that. Like, we don’t care. These are college kids — keep your shirt on,” another added.
That is the entirety of what was said in the video — meaning it’s also unclear where McAfee got the idea that they called him “corny” and “creepy.”
A harmless video of a couple college kids at Utah: “Pat is a little silly taking his shirt off but we still love him!”
Pat Mcafee: “THEY TRIED TO BLOW MY HEAD CLEAN OFF JUST LIKE CHARLIE.”
— Joey Knish (@JoeyKnish22) October 27, 2026
Based on my research, it would appear that McAfee does, quite regularly: yell, deploy one-liners (sometimes even alongside a caricature Southern accent), and take his shirt off. Thus, the impressions presented by the students were exactly that.
And yet, McAfee felt so threatened that his mind wandered to potentially being assassinated like Charlie Kirk was; a revelation that even prompted a facial expression from the famously stoic AJ Hawk.
This was so crazy it got AJ Hawk to make a facial expression for the first time in his life. https://t.co/nQTXGVj8LT
— Poerbler (@Poerbler) October 26, 2026
The whole McAfee experience on ESPN seems to be reaching a bit of a crossroads. ESPN has invested boatloads of resources in him and made him the face of the network. That resulting ubiquity, however, has seemed to lead to a bit of overexposure, which would perhaps explain the recent growing backlash to McAfee’s style. And that backlash is clearly impacting McAfee, as he’s referenced it multiple times across various programs in recent weeks, and has decided to double down on the behavior fueling the decreasing popularity under the guise of being a rebellious maverick.