Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti talked about the spat going on between Bill Simmons and Pat McAfee on Boomer & Gio this morning on WFAN. “Media Beefs are great when you’re not involved in them,” Giannotti said while starting the conversation.
The pair went through the recent history of Simmons and McAfee taking shots at one another on their platforms. It appears to have started when Simmons did an unflattering impression of McAfee on his podcast, or as Giannotti said, “He does this thing where he makes Pat McAfee look like an idiot surrounded by idiots.”
McAfee then came back at Simmons, noting both had promotions going with FanDuel around the Super Bowl. “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.”
Two days later, during the Feb. 14 edition of The Bill Simmons Podcast, Simmons discussed sports ratings and took a subtle dig at McAfee’s, though he only refers to him as “whoever replaced the 12 p.m. SportsCenter.”
“This is going to keep going,” Giannotti said. “I feel like they need to do this on the air. Either McAfee needs to go on Simmons’ podcast or Simmons needs to go on McAfee.”
Esiason asked his co-host which of the two shows are more popular. Gio replied, “Right now I would say that the Pat McAfee show is.””Then why doesn’t Pat McAfee just laugh it off and just move on?” asked Esiason. “If you’re Coke, why are you fighting with Pepsi?”
Gio talked about the criticisms McAfee has faced and the battles he has fought recently. “Now [McAfee is] in the spotlight more than he’s ever been in the spotlight,” he said. “I think that he’s a little bit raw from all the things that have gone on since he’s gone over to ESPN…and he’s like, here’s Bill Simmons, who he probably thinks is a douche, taking a shot at him saying he doesn’t know what he’s doing. That hit harder to him than it would have normally if he hadn’t gone through all this other stuff. Does that make sense?”
“It does make sense,” Esiason said. “But I would just say, look man, you take the money, you put yourself on a platform where more people can see you, it’s part of the job, that’s all, just take it.”
