Alert your local sports media CEO — the 12 p.m. SportsCenter is back, at least for the next two weeks while The Pat McAfee Show takes a well-deserved break. The show will be back on March 4, and in the meantime, the noon SportsCenter will fill its three-hour timeslot.
ESPN PR put out two posts on X prior to the show’s noon timeslot to disseminate the news. McAfee and crew made no formal mentions of a vacation on social media, only posting a moment from the show’s Nov. 21 edition at 9:23 a.m. today.
McAfee has had his fair share of conflict with ESPN since bringing his show to the network last year but the show has been a hit for the Worldwide Leader. The Pat McAfee Show posted its most-watched month ever in Jan. 2024 and drew an average of 506,000 viewers across linear and digital throughout that month. However, McAfee took a shot at ESPN exec Norby Williamson, accusing him of sabotaging the show by leaking inaccurate ratings figures and referring to the exec as a “rat.”
Our opening line, of course, is a reference to the ongoing beef between McAfee and The Ringer CEO Bill Simmons, the latter of whom recently made a dig at the former’s ratings using the departed 12 p.m. SportsCenter as ammo. On The Bill Simmons Podcast, Simmons said, “Everybody’s ratings are basically up except for the NBA and whoever replaced the 12 p.m. SportsCenter. If your ratings don’t go up it’s probably a bad sign.” For the next two weeks, Simmons can ratings watch and see if his statement was true, while McAfee may continue to make it a case of him vs. the world.
