Pat McAfee is now one of the centers of the ESPN universe. Could that have ever been Dan Le Batard? His producer Chris Cote pointed out that there was a lot about McAfee’s ESPN2 simulcast of Texas’s win over Alabama that looked like their show.
Le Batard said he recognizes that too, but isn’t sure it was ever possible for ESPN to put their show in the spotlight the way it is doing for McAfee.
“What is funny about what just happened with McAfee is I don’t know if it’s so because I can’t I can’t go back in time and know if it would actually be possible to have my politics and be what that is, because it’s inescapable that post George Floyd, what happened there is they told me focus groups showed no politics with this and that show’s not going to have politics,” Le Batard said on his Monday show. “But it looks a little bit like ours. Like all of it, the fun formula and all that stuff. But at the center of it is a professional wrestler who’s vastly more entertaining than me.”
Le Batard was careful to note that he was not taking a shot at McAfee. He is a fan of what the former punter has accomplished since walking away from the NFL.
“God, do I admire his story! Bet on himself, did it his way and now cashes all of the king’s riches. But ESPN chose that over Bomani and me and Sarah and whatever it is that we were doing that doesn’t fit with the politics of whatever McAfee’s doing, which is not going to go near Trump and is going to rah rah the hell out of football very well all season.”
Last week, The Pat McAfee Show debuted on ESPN. The network used the matchup between Alabama and Texas as something of a coming out party for their new star. He did his show from Tuscaloosa on Friday, was on College GameDay Saturday morning and then anchored the ESPN2 alternate broadcast of the game that night.
While Dan Le Batard recognizes a lot of his own show in Pat McAfee’s, he isn’t convinced that ESPN would ever have embraced it the way it has McAfee.
“I don’t know if we could have ever actually been there, given what my politics are like. I don’t think it’s possible.”
