On Sunday, new $85 million ESPN hire Pat McAfee provoked quite a stir on Twitter.
There, McAfee responded to a tweet from his friend and show-coworker Evan Fox on Michigan State football uniforms with a suggestion that former MSU/USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar (currently serving three concurrent sentences ranging from 40 to 175 years over sexual assaults, possession of child pornography, and tampering with evidence) was involved in those uniforms’ design:
I think Nassar was in on the design team actually
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) July 30, 2023
That, understandably, led to some backlash for McAfee. He offered a defense of his take on Twitter in the form of a meme of new coworker, Stephen A. Smith:
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) July 30, 2023
On his show Monday, McAfee addressed the criticism. There, he largely defended his take, claiming it was appropriate commentary between friends. He did offer some “Sorry if you were offended” remarks but didn’t back down on tweeting about Nassar in relation to Spartans’ uniforms.
Here’s the full clip:
It got loud on the internet yesterday..
Larry Nassar is a terrible human being and this show has covered that pretty extensively #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/XkKydVvpHK
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) July 31, 2023
A few selected transcriptions of that, with timestamps:
0:12: “Hey, listen. I don’t want to say it, because there is, you know, an all-out onslaught against me right now for simply linking one terrible thing from a school with the most terrible thing from a school to a friend in a reply tweet, talking **** to a friend. And I do apologize if some people took that in a different way and spun it in their own narrative to other people and kind of did their own thing. I was simply talking **** to a friend. But, does it feel like Michigan State alums are trying to silence the media whenever they acknowledge that Larry Nassar, one of the most horrible humans ever, of all time, he was at Michigan State 14 years? So that’s not really a part of the story, that they kind of created and empowered him? So, like, if that’s going to get us canceled, whoa. Whoa. It’s going to get loud.
“And I was thinking this yesterday as people were reading this thing. People were like, ‘You need to delete this and apologize.’ And I’m like ‘Uh, why? I’m talking **** to my friend about something that definitely happened at his school. And I said this guy’s on the design team. If he was, this guy’s done the worst imaginable, so if he did design those terrible jerseys that Michigan State had as well, that would be, that wouldn’t even be mentioned in the Larry Nassar entire thing.”
“But I want to let everybody know what’s going on. We believe Larry Nassar is a terrible human, the worst human, disgusting human. I would like to say that this show covered that more than probably anybody, more than anybody about how bad of a guy he is, more than anybody did. So there was a lot of people who were like ‘Oh, you think this guy…’, and I’m like, ‘No, terrible guy, also Foxy’s school.'”
“And I do appreciate that Michigan State all kind of came together, seemingly, around me. There was people talking ****, terrible **** to me, saying some awesomely terrible things to me.”
2:32: “We need to tell people that there’s disgusting, horrible people in powerful positions. We can’t just, this isn’t something where it’s like ‘can’t talk about this.’ It’s like ‘Hey, in our history, very recent history, people were given a lot of power, and were terrible people in the sports world.’ And the way we decide to cover it is by talking **** to somebody who loves everything about Michigan State because that’s his school.
“If I went to Michigan State and this whole thing happened and they didn’t say that to me, we would be avoiding something that’s very serious and very terrible and very real. So I do apologize to everybody that just took my six-word tweet and said that I was disrespecting this and not thinking about the victims. I was like ‘What?’ I think we’re thinking about the victims, future victims, by reminding people that this m*********** had a lot of power at Michigan State for a long time while being a terrible human being. And I’m just s***talking a friend.”
4:43: “And then I got everybody telling me I need to delete it and apologize for it and all that ****, and I’m thinking, ‘Well, if I apologize for that, there might be 150 shows we have to delete off the internet.’ It’s like ‘I will talk **** about bad people forever. Sue me. Don’t actually. Shoutout Brett Favre.”
It’s interesting that McAfee responded this way, especially with the claim that his show “covered that more than probably anybody” when it came to the Nassar scandal. And this was very much a “Sorry if you were offended” apology. We’ll see if anything further comes of it.
