Pat McAfee is well aware of the recent survey done by The Athletic that showed 49% of respondents didn’t like seeing McAfee on College GameDay, and while he knows he’s not everyone’s cup of tea, even Pat acknowledged that 49% has made an impact.
McAfee quote tweeted The Athletic’s Chris Vannini, who posted a screenshot of the article containing the results of the survey, on Sunday morning offering his thoughts.
“I’ve never been friends with a human that reads The Athletic so I’m not 100% sure what style of human these 3100 folks are but HUGE Shahtaht to the 30%,” he wrote, alluding to the results of the survey that found 30% of respondents actually liked seeing Pat on GameDay.
McAfee initially signed a two-year contract in 2021 that added him to the desk of ESPN’s signature college football pregame show. Pat continued in his tweet on Sunday that his future on the show remains unclear presently.
“To the 49%, I have some great news,” he said. “I have heard you all very loud and clear since the beginning of my stint with GameDay. It’s one of the biggest reasons why I have not re-signed a contract with the legendary show.”
Still, McAfee said he’s looking forward to finishing out this 2023 season and learning from all the experiences he’s had on GameDay the last two seasons.
“Excited to enjoy the rest of this year,” he said. “That’s shaping up to be a GREAT one, and then see what the future holds.”
“It’s been an absolute blast and an honor to be at that desk and to work with the fine folks of that family,” Pat continued.
McAfee joked that he’s enjoyed having to work for basically 7 days a week the last two football seasons. So perhaps McAfee is at a point where he may scale back what he’s doing starting in 2024 in addition to his daily sports talk show.
That show must be renamed to chase away the old audience and bring in his new. The fact that he has no regard for The Athletic or anybody who would read in-depth reporting shows what he is more interested in for entertainment. He’s a crowd-pleaser, stand up and populist, and WWE was perfect. GameDay had done a lot of serious pieces and was a thought leader on BCS expansion – so many important issues. They can’t grow with that audience and, like all audience aggregators on the network level, focus on casual fans for growth. Taylor Swift and the NFL is a great example of chasing casual female fans.