Pat McAfee Reacts To Fans Saying He ‘Sold Out’ For Signing With ESPN

It was announced earlier this week that Pat McAfee would be “jumping ship” by taking his widely popular podcast from FanDual to ESPN later this year. When the news surfaced, the former NFL punter received a lot of backlash from his fanbase.

Speaking on his “The Pat McAfee Show” podcast, the host of ESPN’s College GameDay and part-time WWE commentator addressed the criticism from some who believe he “sold out” by signing with ESPN. He said,

“It is a little bit more of [the] negative. You gotta stay out of the mentions. I just stay in the [timeline]… it’s been tough to go over to the mentions bar. It has been tough out there.”

“I don’t think I expected that. That was a miscalculation, I think… And I think the reason why I did not expect it is because like, it’s not — it didn’t even cross my mind. At this stage — and we’re young, obviously, we’re 20 years younger than pretty much everybody else that’s on TV at this stage, right? Pretty much. Twenty years younger. So we are young, but I feel like our people were the ones that were most mad. It’s like, ‘Hey, we have a good history, do we not?’ Do I not have a pretty solid of ‘Eh, don’t love what’s going on here?’

“Do I negotiate those into things? Yes. Are there expectations going into these things? Yes. It’s like, have I not earned any trust at all from anybody for any of the things that we have done? I don’t know. I guess not. And some of the things that were being said are very, very rude. But back to your point, Twitter has become a different experience. [laughs]”

The internet is AWESOME 😂😂#PMSLive pic.twitter.com/sxt9AdVRc5

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) May 18, 2023

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