I graduated from the University of Alabama in 2003. After that, I lived in Birmingham for two years. I tell you all of that to give you some background.
During the start of the invasion of Iraq, I was living in a media market that, at the time, had one of the country’s highest percentages of talk radio stations across the dial. I heard “you hate the troops” a lot.
That was the retort for more than just questioning the justification for sending American troops into an unprovoked war. It could have been for any number of reasons: you still said “French fries,” you laughed at something George W. Bush said, or you went to see the wrong movie.
“You hate the troops” was the mating call of talentless people who were put in front of a microphone and told to talk about politics. It was the 6/7 of the time: A meaningless phrase that sent idiots into a frenzy. It’s the kind of thing that talk radio was built on.
How the hell did Pat McAfee pull that ol’ chestnut out last week with a straight face?
Everyone knows that criticism makes McAfee crazy. We don’t need to lay out the evidence of that here. It’s well documented.
I did not know that criticism also made him lazy.
Look, maybe that’s on me. The guy is a professional wrestler, after all. A cheap pop is all that matters, and if you can get one without trying too hard, even better.
And to be fair to Pat, he’s not alone. It’s 2025. No one is trying hard. Every movie is a reboot of something from decades ago. Why not bring back jingoistic bullying, too?
Donald Trump made an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show on Tuesday under the guise of celebrating Veterans’ Day. You know how this went. No one said anything of substance about veterans or active military, and while you might read that Trump made some sports-related comments, the truth is, the guy just continued to prove that he does not watch popular American sports, and he cannot string two coherent sentences about them together.
McAfee didn’t have to defend it, but he’s Pat McAfee, so yeah, he did. Not because we demanded it, but because Pat always has to be about branding.
If you are an American of a certain age, I think it’s safe to say that you got spoiled by sixteen years of presidents who know ball. From 2001 until 2016, if the President of the United States was at a sporting event and invited to sit down with the broadcasters, you could be guaranteed that the conversation would be about the game, or at least the sport being played, and that the president would have something intelligent about it to say. That’s what happens when you elect the former co-owner of the Texas Rangers, followed by a guy who keeps PTI on inside his campaign bus.
Since then, inviting the president on any sports or sports-adjacent programming is another example of patriotism for display purposes only. It’s not a Pat McAfee thing. The entire sports media is guilty of it and has been for a long time. It’s transparent and boring.
Normal human beings do not go through their day wondering if the people on TV or behind the cameras love the country enough. If they’re watching a game, they’re thinking about that game and those teams. Anything else is just in the way. Anyone who takes to social media to question someone’s patriotism at a sporting event is a boob shouting their uncreative, boring take into a landscape of brain rot.
No audience has ever tuned in to a sporting event or a sports show with their first priority being patriotic pomp and circumstance that surrounds it, except for maybe Mike Pence. Having the freedom to accept or reject a sports host interviewing the President of the United States and platforming his controversial views is what makes America great. “You hate the troops” is the opposite of that. It’s disrespectful to the people you claim to be protecting. Worse than that, it’s lazy and disrespectful to the audience.
Go ahead and say that I hate the troops if you feel the urge. I think about that sentence the same way I think about the word “epic.” I can’t believe that anyone would use it sincerely, not in 2002 and certainly not in 2025.
About Demetri Ravanos