The brutal layoffs that claimed 20 ESPN talents earlier this year, including top NBA game analyst Jeff Van Gundy Suzy Kolber, and Steve Young somehow got blamed on one guy at the time: Pat McAfee.
ESPN’s Pat McAfee may have made the network a bit uncomfortable during his guest appearance on First Take on Tuesday.
He spoke on several anchors laid off by the World Wide Leader, while cursing during the live taping of the show.
He pushed back against those who blame him for ESPN’s layoffs, including Georgia Bulldogs fans upset about former Bulldogs star David Pollack’s ouster.
“You’ve got to remember, the whole narrative over here was because my show came to ESPN, we fired Steve Young, we fired all the people that were here and were great people at ESPN and it was my show’s fault,” McAfee said. “On GameDay, [former Georgia star defensive end] David Pollack got let go. David Pollack, who I am a massive fan of – one of the greatest [Georgia] Bulldogs of all time, dude who was very good to me. I took his spot.”
McAfee was booed during his College GameDay appearance at the SEC Championship Game last weekend, which led to his epic trolling of them. During Saturday’s pregame show, McAfee played the Georgia fans by singing a Georgia chant before then choosing the Crimson Tide.
“So Georgia fans all year, not necessarily the biggest McAfee fans. That being said, I was very, very nice to them, I was very cordial to them, but in the biggest moment, in front of them all, it was a nice little reminder that: ”Hey, you can go to hell too.”
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Smith, who has his own fare share of critics, piggybacked onto McAfee’s statement.
‘It’s very cathartic to tell people to go to hell,’ Smith said.
McAfee left FanDuel to sign a five-year, $85 million deal with ESPN earlier this year, which came just before the network laid off several high-profile anchors as part of 7,000 job cuts by Disney.
Despite what people may think of him, McAfee has been a great hire for the Worldwide Leader in Sports.
