A preview clip of the latest All the Smoke podcast featuring Pat McAfee was posted, and it seems like the current ESPN star isn’t done with his war against sports media executives who doubted him. While speaking with hosts Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, McAfee gets candid about his ascent from NFL punter to sports media superstar and says he had plenty of doubters along the way:
“ESPN said ‘We got nothing for you,’ FOX said, ‘We got nothing for you,'” McAfee said when detailing his initial interviews with established media companies. “CBS said, ‘We got nothing for you, we don’t want to hear a punter who’s been arrested, that swears, who’s an Internet guy, on our [airwaves].”
McAfee then talks about the path he ultimately took — partnering with Barstool Sports while keeping his own company. McAfee says working at Barstool was a “university of how digital works” but eventually, McAfee and his team realized they could do it on their own. McAfee departed Barstool, and the rest was history.
“Now we’re coming back to the point where I’m negotiating with Amazon…NBC…Apple…ESPN…and it was all those same middle management people from five/six years ago who said, ‘we got nothing for you,’ and I remembered that.”
The full All the Smoke interview with McAfee drops this Thursday.
