New York Post sports media reporter Andrew Marchand has been getting pushback from some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment recently over his reporting.
After the media insider put the odds at a 49% chance that Tom Brady ever becomes a broadcaster for Fox and a 51% chance he doesn’t, that led to a bunch of aggregated headlines, one of which got back to the NFL legend, who called it “fake news.”
Last week, after Marchand said on his podcast that “the XFL is not getting any rights fee from ESPN,” The Rock, who is one of the owners of the spring football league, said that was “not true” though doing so without proving why that’s the case.
On Monday, Marchand reported that while recently retired NFL star JJ Watt has a lot of offers on the table, the future Pro Football Hall of Famer is still mulling them over as he wonders how intense he wants his TV schedule to be. While Awful Announcing reported last month that NBC was hoping to land Watt for its Big Ten studio road show and subsequent coverage, Marchand said that CBS was now considered the favorite.
Pat McAfee mentioned that report on Tuesday’s show and soon found himself in a sidebar about how Marchand covered his recent round of negotiations, which culminated in a massive deal with ESPN.
https://twitter.com/PatMcAfeeShow/status/1671205445716033537
“Now I heard CBS is in on JJ Watt,” said McAfee while discussing the topic with his crew. “As somebody who went through this whole thing, with the same exact people…not everything you read is accurate. There was some clearly false statements being made by Marchand in the Post about the negotiations that I was going through. But there was also “How’d the **** this guy get this information?’
“The way Marchand operates, I don’t know who he has, how he has it, but he does have…some of his information is on. Very on. And it’s like, ‘Wow, alarmingly close to what’s actually happening here’ and me and only three other people know this information. So, Marchand’s plugged in. Then I start trying to piece together who’s potentially telling Marchand, just strictly because we try to do with Ian [Rapoport]. Just like we try to do with [Adam] Schefter.
“And then there was some stuff he was saying that was just like not even close. Helped me. Immensely. Loved everything he was saying for some things but they were way off.”
Marchand was the first to say McAfee might opt out of his FanDuel contract and initially pegged Amazon as the favorite before effectively predicting the ESPN outcome three weeks before it happened and then broke the story, so it’s hard to argue that he was “wrong” at any point. McAfee’s animus for the NY Post reporter seems to come from the financial figures that were made public. Marchand’s initial report was that McAfee was getting $85 million over five years, but the host pushed back on those numbers and how the reporter arrived at them.
“He asked me he’s ‘hearing that that’s the number. Can you confirm?’” McAfee said on May 31. “And I said, ‘Interesting number. I’ll never talk about the actual numbers. Not my thing. But I do appreciate your interest in our show.’ And then I went on to answer all of his other things. Then the headline is ‘Confirmed!’”
McAfee seems to have some mixed feelings about the whole media insider thing. Understandably, it’s one thing when you’re the subject of someone’s reporting and you’re trying to secretly lock down million-dollar deals. But by all accounts, even when Marchand was reporting what McAfee describes as inaccurate information, it helped him. So what’s the problem, ultimately?
The outspoken and brash sports media personality has long struggled to figure out how to have his cake and eat it too. McAfee revels in being the Aaron Rodgers Whisperer but bristled at criticism over not pushing back on the anti-vaxxer over his wild statements (though he eventually got better at it). He’s enjoyed the ability to be a news breaker but takes it personally when other insiders do their job at the same time. In fact, he ends up taking a lot of things personally, especially when his friends are being criticized. He likes to play up his outsider status but is more than happy to throw his weight around when needed, overstepping every so often.
All of this isn’t to say McAfee is a whiner or sore sport. He just hasn’t quite mastered the ability to play the game while also knowing he’s part of the game too. You don’t get to have a massively popular show and work for the likes of WWE and ESPN without people having strong opinions about how you do it. You don’t sign a multi-million dollar deal with ESPN and then get to be shocked when leading media insiders are digging into everything you do. For better or worse, that’s how it works.
And if you don’t like it, well, Don Draper said it best…
https://twitter.com/pmsnocontext/status/1661961027028697088
