OutKick’s Hot Mic show with Jonathan Hutton and Chad Withrow, spent time this week talking about the ongoing feud between ESPN staffers Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith. According to the New York Post’s Ryan Glasspiegel, Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee had a private conversation that turned ugly over creative differences on an unnamed project that Stephen. A will produce through his production company, Mr. SAS Productions.
Allegedly, McAfee called Smith a “motherf*****r” at one point during the call. Glasspiegel said the argument caused Smith to ban McAfee from appearing on First Take, but that ban was since lifted once cooler heads prevailed. The Post reached out to both McAfee and Smith who said any animosity between the two has since been resolved.
Jonathan Hutton asked Withrow, “What is going on, where ESPN has this ‘we are not going to comment on it’ and all they’ve done, the two of them and McAfee especially, is comment and bringing up this whole saga back and forth again? They never addressed it internally, I truly believe they never really did anything about it, they just tried to ignore it and hope it just went away over the 24-hour news cycle and that the ‘we are not commenting on this’ would echo through McAfee especially, and now Stephen A. They didn’t punish McAfee for it so nothing is going to happen here, it will continue.”
Withrow replied, “Some good reporting from the New York Post, first off, to get the report out there. And then get, what comes down to, a complete rebuttal of the entire story from both Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith, other than not denying the fact that a heated phone conversation took place and that Pat McAfee called Stephen A Smith a “mother-effer” in that call. That was not addressed in the two statements back to the New York Post.”
Withrow added, “I think this is partly ESPN saying, ‘you guys are such big celebrities now with big voices, you’re big boys you handle it however you want, but dont let this grow to be something else, so go ahead and release your statements and talk to the New York Post and say whatever you want to about the story, but don’t let this get back to us this time the way Pat McAfee calling out Norby Williamson got back to em last time.’ What did Pat McAfee say about all of that? He didn’t apologize…It all seems like a mess…but the more it seems like a mess, the more I think some it is an orchestrated mess in that ESPN isn’t doing or saying anything to stop it. They are allowing it to continue.”
Hutton that brought a name into the conversation that has come up before with Pat McAfee. “You know what I initially thought, just because it is the New York Post, is that Norby Williamson leaked this to them as well.”
Regardless of where the information came from, Withrow believes this is all a positive for ESPN and they may have something to do with it. “It seems to me like this isn’t the worst news for ESPN,” he said. “And because of Pat McAfee’s wrestling background…I don’t think we are getting full-on worked… but I do believe that ESPN is at least remotely complicit in a work that is going on, in that they are not issuing statements, they are not demanding apologies from either one of them, they’re not suspending anybody. So, I take all of that info to say that ESPN does not care about this going on. This could be an ‘any publicity is good publicity’ type situation for ESPN.
