The kickoff of ESPN’s College GameDay will bring a new season while also saying goodbye to a key member of its legendary past. As the show begins a new season on August 30, Lee Corso will be joining the program for the final time. Consequently, the program’s lineup will officially be set as Corso exits, transitioning to a five-man team that includes the most recent additions: Nick Saban and Pat McAfee.
Meanwhile, McAfee’s co-host on GameDay, Kirk Herbstreit, made headlines earlier this summer when he told the Net Positive with John Crist podcast a tale of how McAfee stepped up with his personal wallet to help the GameDay program avoid behind-the-scenes budget cuts from ESPN. According to Herbstreit, McAfee’s gesture seemed to catch ESPN’s upper management off guard, then changing their thinking on budget moves associated with the signature television franchise.
In response, former MLB executive David Samson reacted to the story on today’s Nothing Personal with David Samson program. He explained that the gesture by McAfee—if true—will not change any mindset about how budget cuts occur.
“When a company is downsizing, they’re doing it purposefully. Not in order to have the big feed talent like [Pat] McAfee, like a [Dan] Le Batard pay to keep those people. They’re doing it because they believe it’s in the best interest of the company to not have those people in the positions they’re in,” explained Samson.
Furthermore, Samson went on to describe how the process of layoffs and budget cuts typically works from the top on down. It’s a process, he said, in which financial numbers align through layers of decision-making, ultimately trusting local managers to make tough calls. Therefore, the former MLB executive doesn’t believe that the gesture by McAfee will change anything in the approach from ESPN, as Herbstreit described.
“If you think that Pat McAfee [doing] that changes the philosophy of Disney, and that Disney will stand up and say, ‘Alright, we’ll do that. We’re not going to fire anyone in your crew,’” said Samson. “Then you’re high like McAfee. I don’t mean on drugs, I just mean in general on life.”
Additionally, he noted that no matter what gesture any talent may make, companies will continue to do what they believe is in the best interest of the organization.
“Getting the money to have a band-aid put on a situation that you know is secreting blood and gunk in a way that can’t be stopped by one band-aid,” noted Samson. “Getting one band-aid seems irrelevant when you need two, and you may just need to wrap a tourniquet around the whole darn thing. Pat McAfee covering budget cuts of ESPN, he’s not.”
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