Pat McAfee has accused ESPN of sabotaging his show the same day the sports network apologized for the inflammatory comments Aaron Rodgers made about Jimmy Kimmel on The Pat McAfee Show last week.
On the Friday afternoon broadcast of his show, McAfee took time to call out ESPN executive Norby Williamson for leaking information about his show to journalists. The comments came after The New York Post's Andrew Marchand wrote an article claiming McAfee needed better TV ratings if his show was going to become problematic for ESPN following the issue between Aaron Rodgers and Jimmy Kimmel.
"We're very appreciative, and we understand that more people are watching this show than ever before," McAfee said. "We're very thankful for the ESPN folks for being very hospitable. Now, there are some people actively trying to sabotage us from within ESPN—more specifically, I believe, Norby Williamson is the guy who is attempting to sabotage our program."
He continued, "Now, I'm not 100 percent sure. That is just seemingly the only human that has information, and then that information gets leaked, and it's wrong, and it sets a narrative of what our show is...And then are we just gonna combat that from a rat every single time?
"Somebody tried to get ahead of our actual ratings release with wrong numbers 12 hours beforehand. That's a sabotage attempt. It's been happening this entire season from some people who didn't necessarily love the whole addition of 'The Pat McAfee Show' to the ESPN family. There's a lot of those."
Interestingly enough, ESPN issued an apology for Rodgers' inflammatory remarks about Kimmel last week on McAfee's show the same day he called them out. Last Tuesday, the Super Bowl Champion said Kimmel's name would show up on the list of people who were associated with Jeffrey Epstein after McAfee and his co-hosts egged him on.
In their apology, which was shared by ESPN's vice president of digital production, Mike Foss, the sports network said via Front Office Sports, "Aaron made a dumb and factually inaccurate joke about Jimmy Kimmel. It should never have happened. We all realized that in the moment."
Foss also revealed that Rodgers is expected to be back on the show soon, telling Front Office Sports, "Pat announced today that he's planning on Aaron joining the show Tuesday. The show will continue to evolve. It wouldn't surprise me if Aaron's role evolves with it."
McAfee did offer an apology a day after Rodgers' comments. According to McAfee, Rodgers was "trying to talk shit" and may have gone too far in some people's minds and made note he and his crew were shocked by the statement.
"I can see exactly why Jimmy Kimmel felt the way he felt, especially with his position. But I think Aaron was just trying to talk shit," McAfee said. "Now, did it go too far in a lot of people's… Jimmy Kimmel certainly said that was the case. We and I, immediately upon it happening tried to be like 'whoa.'"
McAfee continued, "We obviously don't like the fact that we are associated with anything negative, ever. We like our show to be an uplifting one, a happy one, a fun one. But it's because we talk shit and try to make light of everything.
"Some things, obviously, people get very pissed off about, especially when they (are) serious allegations. So we apologize for being a part of it. Can't wait to hear what Aaron has to say about it. Hopefully, those two will just be able to settle this, not court-wise. But be able to chit-chat and move along."
