Ari Emanuel is try­ing to get Pat McAfee a role in ‘Heat 2’

Pat McAfee becomes the face of ESPN. Fine.

Pat McAfee becomes the centrifugal force at the center of College GameDay. Okay sure.

Pat McAfee starts showing up on Monday Night Countdown. Why not?

Pat McAfee releases a music album and gets a part in a Peter Berg WWII movie. We’re losing the plot, but alright.

Pat McAfee gets a part in Michael Mann’s Heat 2? Okay, now we riot.

For America’s dads, there is perhaps no more anticipated upcoming film than Heat 2, the sequel to the seminal 1995 crime drama starring Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Val Kilmer. Directed by Mann, Heat is revered not just for its action scenes but for its status as blockbuster art featuring some of the most celebrated American actors of all time playing obsessive professionals on opposite sides of the law.

Mann and Meg Gardiner released Heat 2 as a novel in 2022, serving as both a prequel and sequel to the film, and fans have clamored for a film adaptation ever since. That’s finally happening, with yet another who’s who of actors stepping into these now-iconic roles, including Christian Bale, Leonardo DiCaprio, Adam Driver, Stephen Graham, and possibly Ebon Moss-Bachrach.

And Pat McAfee, if super agent Ari Emanuel gets his way.

Earlier this week, New York Magazine published an interview with Emanuel, the executive chairman of entertainment and media agency WME Group and the CEO of TKO Group Holdings, which owns the UFC and WWE. Few people in the entertainment industry are as powerful and influential, and he usually gets what he wants.

And what he apparently wants is to see McAfee appear in Heat 2.

“I’m try­ing to get Pat McAfee a role in a Michael Mann movie,” Emanuel told New York Magazine, later confirming that he was referring to Heat 2. “I’m not going to tell you what part. But he’s incred­ible in Pete Berg’s movie The Mos­quito Bowl, and he’s really good in the Taylor Sheridan show with Stal­lone, Tulsa King, so I’m try­ing to get him into this thing.”

If you’re like me, reading that made you feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Those millions of voices were America’s fathers, losing a part of their soul at the idea of this guy besmirching the untapped potential of what might just be the most anticipated dad movie of all time.

Put Pat McAfee in Peter Berg’s patriotism porn. Put Pat McAfee in Taylor Sheridan TV shows. Put Pat McAfee in WWE events. Hell, put him in Reacher as a thug who thinks, for some weird reason, he’s the one guy who can beat up Jack Reacher.

But please don’t put Pat McAfee in Heat 2. America’s dads can’t handle it.

Sarcasm aside, the anecdote shows how powerful McAfee’s friends are in the industry and perhaps offers a little insight into why he’s so ever-present in our lives. For a guy who always says he hates “suits,” he has Bob Iger, Donald Trump, and Ari Emanuel on speed dial.