From the get-go, Pat McAfee has been very clear that his show isn’t an ESPN show.
He’s also been very clear that he’s not afraid to take off the gloves and critique the network that cuts his checks when he sees fit. Just recently, the former Indianapolis Colts punter accused the Worldwide Leader of “trying to piss people off” in honoring Prince Harry with the Pat Tillman Award.
And Tuesday saw more of the same as the host of The Pat McAfee Show teased an appearance from Dan Orlovsky, quipping that he’s been on ESPN all morning having the same conversation for the past three shows. McAfee led that by saying, “We’ll probably just cook him and ESPN as a whole for a lot of the sh*t they’ve been putting out from ESPN’s people.”
That includes the recently featured ESPN.com list of the top 100 athletes of the century. Here’s how ESPN explained its selection process:
Accounting only for athletic accomplishments since January 1, 2000, com utilized a panel of experts and ESPN’s renowned Stats & Information Group to rank the top 100 athletes across all sports. More than 75,000 votes were cast by ESPN’s reporters, analysts, producers, editors, and experts around the globe to whittle the initial list of 400 athletes to 100.
And in recently releasing Nos. 100-51, the network has taken criticism for some of its choices. Just off the bat, having Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers at No. 98 has already been critiqued, and so has Alex Ovechkin, who is ranked No. 54 and coming in behind Adrian Beltre.
There’s been several other complaints, but we’ll leave that to Pat.
Pat McAfee nukes ESPN’s recent list of their Top 100 athletes of the 2000s… on ESPN!
“It is the epitome of everything that everybody hates about ESPN… what a shitshow.” pic.twitter.com/VfYZjorEo3
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) July 16, 2024
“Now, there is a top-100 list that’s coming out from ESPN people, and I’ll tell you what, it is the epitome of everything that everybody hates about ESPN,” McAfee continued. “What they chose to do in ranking the top-100 athletes from the 21st century, they only gave us 5(1)-100 yesterday; what a sh*tshow. What an absolutely terrible list. And we’ll blame Dan Orlovsky for that.”
You can’t please everyone. But to be fair to McAfee, he’s not the only one with a problem with the list. He’s the only one bold enough under the ESPN umbrella to say the quiet part out loud.