Pat McAfee Accuses ESPN Executive Of Sabotaging ‘Pat McAfee Show’

Getty Image / Sam Hodde

It’s been far from a normal week for ESPN personality Pat McAfee. After a normal Tuesday appearance by New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers went off the rails, his flagship Pat McAfee Show has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

On Friday, McAfee fired back at people he claims are sabotaging his show, calling out powerful ESPN executive Norby Williamson as someone who is taking aim at the brand he has built.

If you click that link, it should take you to the video timestamp. If not, start at 2:01:29.

Here is what McAfee had to say.

Anyways, we’re very appreciative. And we understand that more people are watching this show than ever before. We’re very thankful for the ESPN folks being very hospitable. Now, there are some people actively trying to sabotage us from within ESPN. More specifically, I believe Norby Williamson is the guy who is attempting to sabotage our program. I’m not 100 percent sure, that is just 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? I don’t know. But like, somebody tried to get ahead of our actual ratings released with wrong numbers 12 hours beforehand. That’s a sabotage attempt. And it’s been happening basically, this entire season from some people who didn’t necessarily love the old addition of the Pat McAfee show to the ESPN family. There’s a lot of those. We’ve heard them anonymously quoted in The Washington Post, in the New York Post in the New York Times, in the LA Times, in Wall Street Journal. And they’re never like ‘yeah, love the show’ It’s always like little things to try to tear us down. So even with the enemy within our own camp, somebody that we don’t I don’t like that. That guy left me in his office for 45 minutes no-showed me in 2018, so this guy has had zero respect for me. And in return same thing, back to him, for a long time. So even with that taking place in potential, like there’s we’re still growing somehow. So we’re very thankful. Yeah, I think we’re doing it right. We’re trying to do it as right as possible. We have good intentions every single time we come in here. We don’t always get it right. But m—– f—– has been getting wrong for a long time in this specific field. Long time.

Williamson is one of the most powerful people in the sports world whose name you almost certainly don’t know. He has spent parts of five decades at ESPN, and serves as executive editor and head of event and studio production for the company. In simpler terms, he is Pat McAfee’s boss.

Pat McAfee’s show originally started on DAZN and moved to YouTube in 2020, where it became a huge hit. After a stint on Sirius XM and a big marketing deal with FanDuel, McAfee signed a reported $85 million contract with ESPN, with his first show on ESPN occurring September 7 of last year The former NFL punter and kickoff specialist no doubt has talent for producing electric and entertaining content, and definitely connects with the younger demographic. He joined the analyst panel on College GameDay this fall, and while he was a controversial addition, ratings were great for the flagship college football preview this season.

But, his weekly interviews with outspoken New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers on Tuesdays has landed him in hot water with some this fall. Most notably, on Tuesday, Aaron Rodgers claimed, in so many words, that there was a link between Jimmy Kimmel, who leads ABC’s late night programming, and deceased alleged sex trafficker and finance billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. This insinuation was met with vociferous condemnation from many around the internet, and couldn’t have been received wellin the C-Suite at Disney, who owns both ABC and ESPN.

Pat McAfee has attempted to distance himself from Rodgers’ comments, but the spotlight has not gone away, and he has been under intense scrutiny from the press at large since.

I’m sure it is hard for some executives at ESPN who are used to the way things used to work at the company to see how much talent was let go around the time McAfee was brought in, considering McAfee wouldn’t be considered traditional ESPN programming. There may be something to this on Pat’s end, but I wish he would’ve laid out some more concrete details.

The biggest question is if the Pat McAfee-ESPN marriage is going to be much shorter lived than people expected it to be when he signed his four-year contract.