Pat McAfee returned after a two-week break on Monday, and the ESPN personality had to address a recent controversy he found himself in over the weekend.
McAfee, in a reply tweet to his producer Evan Fox, referenced convicted sexual abuser Larry Nassar. McAfee and Fox had been chirping one another over Michigan State football jerseys.
Pat suggested that Nassar was on the design team. The comment became the subject of backlash from many in the Michigan State fanbase.
McAfee said he didn’t understand why people ran with his comment. He said he was just talking crap to his friend.
“I do apologize if some people took that in a different way and then spun it in their narrative to offend a bunch of people and then kind of did that whole thing,” McAfee said. “I was simply talking shit to my friend, but does it feel like Michigan State alum are trying to silence some media whenever they acknowledge that Larry Nassar is one of the most horrible humans of all time?”
Pat said it was interesting that people would get so mad that he invoked the name of Nassar considering his show followed the story extensively.
“I would like to say that this show covered it more than probably anybody,” he said.
“We need to tell people that there’s disgusting, horrible people in powerful positions,” McAfee later added. “This isn’t something where it’s like, ‘You can’t talk about this.'”
McAfee called the last couple days of the firestorm an eye-opener. But no matter how people feel about it, he’s not going to back down from making sure the world knows when terrible people exist.
“I will talk shit about bad people forever,” McAfee said. “Sue me. Don’t actually. Shoutout Brett Favre.”
