If you ever needed proof that the Walt Disney Company of 2025 isn’t the one that Walt envisioned when he started drawing a little cartoon mouse, look no further than Pat McAfee. Forget fitting the family friendly image the company cultivated for decades. The guy lives for conflict and is downright adversarial to anyone he perceives as not being on his side. Maybe it plays for his audience of 20 and 30 somethings, but at 43, I kind of find it exhausting.
Not that long ago, I was one of McAfee’s loudest champions on this website. Even if the content wasn’t always for me, I appreciated his wit and admired his connection with his audience and his success as a pirate in a very corporate industry. But I have to admit, over the last few weeks, I have lost a lot of respect for Pat McAfee.
He did not start the rumors about an 18-year-old college student cheating on her boyfriend with his father, but he gave plenty of oxygen to that fire. Of course, he’s not the only one. After the young woman began telling her story and explained the damage a rumor, that all involved say is false, has done to her life, Dave Portnoy and other Barstool employees issued apologies for the role they played in turning gossip from a social media platform you’ve never heard of into headline news in the so-called manosphere.
McAfee hasn’t. Instead, he rambled on at his Big Night Aht event last week, never outright naming “that whole thing that’s happening.” He promised that he wouldn’t be afraid of cancel culture, made some vague threat about having “Pittsburgh lawyers,” and then said he hoped “a silver lining” could come out of “a very terrible situation.”
McAfee Needs To Know His Role Before It’s Too Late
I’m not the first to say this. I know I won’t be the last, but Pat, buddy, you’re almost 40. You look like a loser right now.
I don’t mean a loser in the sense that he will come out on the bottom in this situation. There will be no professional consequences for him. Disney’s top brass have shown they don’t have an issue with appearing to work for McAfee and as I’ve written before, ESPN has bent to his culture since his arrival.
When I say that Pat McAfee looks like a loser, I mean that the whole obsession with this story from Ole Miss and the amount of content he generated from it makes him look like an old man. He’s the 20-something that still goes to his old high school’s football games wearing his letterman’s jacket. Maybe a few of the people younger than him are in awe. The rest of us think it’s kind of pathetic.
Pat, you didn’t peak in high school. Why the hell are you acting like someone who did?
Refusing to acknowledge that even if he never mentioned the woman by name, he clearly contributed to the torture his target demo has put her and her family through, makes Pat McAfee look heartless. It makes him look like he knows he is absolutely in the wrong, but rEaL mEn DoN’t ApOlOgIzE!
McAfee will almost certainly be contacted by this woman’s lawyers, if he hasn’t been already. I would guess that despite the plea that runs multiple times during his show on ESPN, those lawyers are going to tell his lawyers that they will sue him if he doesn’t make this right with their client.
Whatever version of Pat McAfee saying “I was wrong and I am sorry” happens can stay between him and the woman at the center of these rumors for all I care. Apologies from McAfee are meaningless. He proved that with the way he handled Aaron Rodgers suggesting that Jimmy Kimmel was a pedophile.
Going Back To What Worked, Will Work Again
As someone that writes about this industry, I just want McAfee to acknowledge his position. If this were a one-time thing with McAfee, maybe I would be less put off by the situation, but his desire to be “naughty” and push the boundaries of what he can get away with is so transparent and inauthentic. I compare him to FOX News hosts that still rail about “the deep state.”
My friend, you’ve won. In any significant way you want to talk about this, you’ve won. Relax.
The inauthenticity is what is so hard to sit with here, because sure, Pat McAfee and his crew are immature, but I don’t think any of them are bad guys. I don’t think they are so dead inside that the stories of people calling this woman’s grandfather in the middle of the night to tell him that his granddaughter is a slut doesn’t bother them.
I get it. The Pat McAfee Show was not created with people like me (dads in their 40s that have seen everything the sports media has to offer) in mind. That would be a very small target.
But, Pat, guys like me see through the hustle. I don’t think I am particularly smart, and young people have a much better detector for try-hards. If I see through the hustle, trust me, a lot of them do too.
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Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
Well said!!