Pat McAfee made more negative comments aimed at a sports media executive, but, fortunately for ESPN it’s at the expense of a former employee. The Ringer CEO Bill Simmons drew McAfee’s ire today when discussing promotional parlays at FanDuel.
“I think Bill Simmons, who has it all figured out, I think he had like 8,000 people riding alongside of him,” McAfee said. “That’s a huge number, yeah — did not hit. That’s really big. Really good, Bill. You still have it…I think we had 250,000 people or something like that. Keep running your mouth, Bill, keep running your mouth.”
In honor of Super Bowl LVIII, FanDuel offered several personality-themed parlays that users could follow alongside. Among the many personalities tied to parlays were both McAfee and Simmons, along with Kay Adams and Rob Gronkowski, McAfee Show’s Darius Butler, video game streamers TimTheTatMan and Dr. Disrespect and more. While we can’t locate exactly what McAfee and Simmons’ respective parlays entailed, it seems like only McAfee’s was successful.
While there’s been no recorded beef between McAfee and Simmons, some sports media entities have their theories. Awful Announcing speculates the beef could have started with a recent McAfee impression Simmons broke out during an episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast that also seemingly criticized the show’s format, including McAfee’s supposed lack of a rundown and multitude of voices.
For now, we await a rebuttal from Simmons or any other Ringer employees.
