Pat McAfee has another gripe with ESPN.
The College GameDay star told a story on Wednesday’s edition of his YouTube show about how he was late getting home the night of the second edition of the 2024 College Football Playoff rankings, and checked in on ESPN’s X accounts to catch up. Or at least he tried.
Only when McAfee logged onto the @ESPNCFB account on X, there was no trace of any news or information related to the rankings.
“I go to X, I’m like, alright what’s going on? Well let me go to the (ESPN) College Football account, this should have me. Nothing, not a single activity,” McAfee said in the first minutes of the show, which of course airs on ESPN from noon-2 p.m. ET.
“So then ESPN’s actual account puts out the list … but shouldn’t the college football account be doing that? Shouldn’t that be like a one-stop shop for everything that’s going on, especially in this brand-new time? So hopefully that takes place. I think the people running that have no idea what they’re doing, but hopefully, inevitably, that will change.”
Sometime after McAfee checked the account, it did eventually repost the main ESPN account’s CFP ranking graphics. Since then, the account has reposted several clips from ESPN studio shows and a Heisman poll sponsored by Nissan.
But as McAfee noted, despite the account’s large following on X, it is far from a “one-stop shop” of college football news.
“I don’t know what they’re doing,” he said. “That’s 3 million followers too, that’s a pretty big [account]. At some point, it had to have something, right? Because people don’t just follow that for no reason.”
The same is true of the @CollegeGameDay account. The X account of the show McAfee stars on at ESPN has no posts since Sunday.
On Instagram, the content is more consistent. ESPN’s post of the updated rankings bracket was co-posted by its main @ESPN account as well as its @ESPNCFB account. There are tons of stats, highlights, and quote graphics coming off the college football weekend.
While the @ESPNCFB Instagram account appears to be much closer to the “one-stop shop” McAfee was hoping to find (and that he wants fans to flock to), he also doesn’t see eye to eye with the worldwide leader about X in general. McAfee said executives in Bristol told him early on in his time with the company that X was increasingly irrelevant.
“I remember a few years ago I was given a full speech by somebody at ESPN about how we’re not using Twitter anymore. Nobody’s on it, and they started putting these numbers up,” McAfee recalled as he continued criticizing management on Wednesday’s Pat McAfee Show.
“And Elon (Musk) bought it? This thing ain’t even gonna exist on Monday. So don’t even do it. And it’s like, did that [platform] win the presidency? Did this one over here? Does this one kinda have a little bit of say, maybe, and do people get all their news from this particular app? I think so, so maybe a little bit more activity there from ESPN. Especially if you’re going to own all the rights to the Playoff. If you’re going to spend billions of dollars on this brand-new Playoff, maybe there should be a vehicle of information on your phone that people can just go to very easily. But what do we know? More than those motherf***ers, I’ll tell you that.”
Clearly McAfee loves to take shots at his partners at ESPN. Despite working for them on GameDay and airing his show on the network for two hours each afternoon, he isn’t afraid to call out the biggest sports network when it comes to how it serves sports fans.
Whether it’s ESPN Bet or an ESPYs award for Prince Harry, McAfee has clashed with ESPN on plenty. And as with those previous clashes, McAfee certainly has a point on this one.
Last November, ESPN stopped advertising on X, joining many major corporations in blacklisting the site under Musk’s ownership. Top talent like NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski (before his retirement) began migrating to Threads and other platforms.
A decent case can be made that more sports fans engage with content on Instagram nowadays, as well as TikTok, where ESPN is the most followed brand and McAfee’s show pulls in a significant audience live and through clips. Still, McAfee continues to use X to grow his own fanbase.
By this point, everyone is used to McAfee going at the suits in Bristol. They probably are used to it, too. Maybe this time, they should listen a little more closely.