Every July 4, competitive eaters take center stage on ESPN for the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. On Monday, for the eleventh time in twelve years, Joey Chestnut took home the mustard yellow belt after eating 63 hot dogs in the allotted ten minutes.
The undeniable gluttony caught the attention of NBC’s Peter King and not in a positive way. He tweeted that the contest was disgusting in light of America’s hunger epidemic.
On Tuesday, Pat McAfee said that he had not thought of the competition in that light before, but had to agree with the sentiment.
“Peter King brought up a pretty good point,” the former punter said on his show. “I didn’t even think about it, to be honest, because I think we all assume that hot dogs are a never-ending commodity. You can never stop making hot dogs because no one knows what is in hot dogs.”
McAfee said he would donate 10,000 hot dogs to food banks and homeless shelters across the country, but noted that he had not quite figured out how to do it yet. He said he would like to partner with Nathan’s, who has already donated over 100,000 hot dogs to food banks in New York City.
The donation was made tongue-in-cheek. McAfee and his crew joked that Peter King may be worried that we are running out of hot dogs, because it can be hard to find them in the grocery store when you go in “on a high horse” and then called out divers for splashing water outside of a pool when rivers and lakes are drying up.
Still, Pat McAfee is sincere in his promise to make the donation, which by the way, will be in King’s name.
“Peter King probably could have done this as well,” McAfee said of his donation. “I assume he will, but him putting out a tweet about hot dogs being shoved down your face made me think ‘you’re right.’ We should think about that stat about people going to bed hungry.”
