Pat McAfee is not shy with his feeling about anything. If there is a subject or person on his mind, he will be honest with his assessment, whether it is good or bad.
When it comes to his new boss at ESPN, Burke Magnus, McAfee’s impression is nothing but positive. On his Thursday show, McAfee said that not only is Magnus a fan and ally of the show, but he has also been helpful in helping the show think about new ways to present content.
“I think he kind of forecasted some of the stuff that was going to potentially come,” McAfee said. “I think he’s a good exec. Like, I think he’s good.”
After news broke that Pat McAfee was looking to find a new home and distribution deal for his show, he took meetings with several executives. He said that that experience and ones before it have taught him just how special Burke Magnus is.
“Everybody assumes that people in powerful positions are good. Well, we have learned that is not true. Couldn’t be further from that in a lot of different genres of business.”
He noted that if he did not think Magnus was the right boss for himself or the show, he would not even mention his relationship with the man, and pointed to how Magnus has eased his mind with some of the uncertainty surrounding how The Pat McAfee Show would sound under the ESPN umbrella.
In an interview with Richard Deitsch of The Athletic, Magnus said that McAfee would be allowed to keep having Ian Rapaport, Shams Charania and other league insiders from outside of the ESPN family on his show, but that the network would hope that McAfee would want to expand the show’s pool of goto voices.
“Everything he says is real and everything I feel like I’ve said is not a lie to people publicly, but whenever Burke comes out and solidifies it, I’m very thankful for that,” McAfee said. “Because Burke could have just like said, ‘Yeah, we’re working through that’ because I probably saves his ass with his people. Instead, he’s like, ‘Hey, this is how this goes.’ I’m very thankful for it.”
McAfee was due to welcome Adam Schefter to the show in a later segment and said that is a good example of the mutual benefit of letting McAfee continue to have his regular guests on. No other show can say they have regular conversations with both Schefter and Rapaport, two of the NFL’s most connected reporters.
