THE KIMMEL-RODGERS FEUD DESTROYS PAT MCAFEE’S SHOW AS AN ESPN FARCE
The network chairman, James Pitaro, hired McAfee for $17 million a year to please his children at home, which means he should be fired if he doesn’t remove this all-time clown from his daily airwaves
An Octagon match between Jimmy Kimmel and Aaron Rodgers would critically help society, in hopes each would sever the other’s tongue. I don’t expect Kimmel’s name to appear on a Jeffrey Epstein associates list, as Rodgers claimed, and I’d be amused if Kimmel sued another Disney Company program about an accompanying football superstar.
“That’s supposed to be coming out soon. There’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, are really hoping that doesn’t come out,” Rodgers said.
“For the record,” Kimmel responded, “I’ve not met, flown with, visited, or had any contact whatsoever with Epstein, nor will you find my name on any ‘list’ other than the clearly-phony nonsense that soft-brained wackos like yourself can’t seem to distinguish from reality. Your reckless words put my family in danger. Keep it up and we will debate the facts further in court.”
Let them contact Dana White. Meanwhile, allow me to wonder why Pat McAfee continues to wreck ESPN with his showtime idiocy. Because his producers have a mute button to control what appears on the air — and if they happen not to, the network chairman should be fired — Rodgers’ comments deserved to be zapped before the rest of us heard them. His brain fartery wasn’t worth the bother of Kimmel’s attorneys or his family’s couth. As someone who performed on ESPN television and national radio forever, I know all about a several-second, in-house delay that fades to silence, and McAfee’s producers should have pushed the button before Rodgers uttered the words “Jimmy Kimmel.”
They didn’t.
Instead, “The Pat McAfee Show” continues to be a flagrant farce and ultimate train wreck for ESPN chairman James Pitaro, who signed him for an outrageous $17 million a year because it brought smiles to his kids at home. In the last week alone, Pitaro has every reason to consider yanking the program before it causes more trouble at a company struggling between streaming programming and the fiscal downfall of cable-cutting. McAfee has paid Rodgers more than $1 million a year as a weekly guest, so it shouldn’t surprise the host when a 40-year-old goon has something foolish to say after hating COVID-19 vaccination, loving ayahuasca and wanting to return to the New York Jets only 3 1/2 months after suffering an Achilles tendon tear.
It’s stunning that McAfee and Pitaro’s Disney people didn’t discuss Rodgers’ longtime feud with Kimmel, who hosts the popular late-night show on ABC/Disney. This dates back years. Kimmel made fun of Rodgers’ anti-vaccination stance, then called him a “wack Packer” after his COVID discussion with McAfee. When Rodgers quoted Martin Luther King, Kimmel said, “You didn’t object. You pretended you were vaccinated and snuck around. Always a good move for a white millionaire to half-quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., by the way.” Then Rodgers launched a discussion last year, with McAfee, about UFOs coinciding with the release of the Epstein client list.
“Did you hear about the Epstein client list about to be released, too? There’s some files that have some names on it that might be getting released pretty soon,” Rodgers said. “(Ghislaine) Maxwell was the only person ever convicted of trafficking, and nobody who was involved in the trafficking ever went to jail, so nothing to see here.”
Replied Kimmel then, before Rodgers signed with the Jets: “Needless to say, all this UFO talk has the tin-foil hatters going wild, including Green Bay wack Packer Aaron Rodgers. … It might be time to revisit that concussion protocol, Aaron.”
When Rodgers went off Tuesday, this should have been significant corporate territory for DIsney and CEO Bob Iger. Instead, McAfee carried on after Rodgers’ spiel, unconcerned about a lawsuit. “Aaron has not forgotten about that,” he said.
“I’ll tell you what, if that list comes out, I will definitely be popping some sort of bottle,” Rodgers said.
Pitaro should have ended the madness on the spot. Instead, McAfee started his Wednesday show by plunging back into the topic. “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 s—,” he 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.’
“We obviously don’t like the fact 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 s— and try to make light of everything. Some things, obviously, people get very pissed off about especially when there that 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.”
Nope. While we wondered about the dump button, America awaited Kimmel’s next outburst Wednesday night, which should be controlled by attorneys before Disney vs. Disney — Kimmel vs. something said on McAfee’s show — takes place. Why no delay, Pat? “There is no formal outline of what we’re going to talk about (and) how we’re going to talk about it,” McAfee said. “… There is no scheduled conversations, there is no scheduled debates, there is no topics for you to think about before you get in there. There is just an opportunity to talk about damn near everything for three and a half hours and in doing so … good times can be had, laughter can be had … and on the flip side, there can be things that are certainly, probably — we’re going to have to hear from Aaron on that — meant to be s--t talk joke that can then become something that is obviously a very serious allegation that then leads to a massive overnight story.”
Massive? Is there a superior in the house? Consider it another problem at the network, where Pitaro already has terminal messes, including an all-betting component that makes goofs of Scott Van Pelt and Elle Duncan on commercials. McAfee’s show was gutted last week by ESPN baseball writer Jeff Passan, angered that one of the show’s producers reported the New York Yankees had signed Yoshinobu Yamamoto to a nine-year, $326-million deal. That was deadly wrong, with the deal consuming 12 years and $325 million with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“Ty Schmit, you are a spectacular scumbag,” Passan said. “You are a scumbag. This show understands scumbaggery better than any show out there. Would you not say what Ty did last night was about as bad a thing as you could do to an entire fanbase? To make them think that the one guy all offseason they wanted and then, because of bourbon … your sources were named Jack, Jim and Jose!”
Curiously, Pitaro helped make Passan’s career at Yahoo Sports before signing him for big money in Bristol. Passan doesn’t care, pummeling McAfee’s doofus. So between gambling and journalistic scumbaggery and Kimmel vs. Rodgers, what is Pitaro doing, exactly?
He is locked into gambling with Penn Entertainment. He doesn’t have to be locked into McAfee, who makes fun of journalism when Pitaro always praises it. “Quality journalism has never been more of a priority at ESPN,” he said recently. “I really do believe we’re the place of record. When something happens in the sports industry, people look to ESPN. We have to get it right, we can’t get it wrong.”
He has it all wrong by paying Pat McAfee more than anyone in the operation, at a time of continuing company layoffs. Please tell me he doesn’t want to air the so-called Octagon match. I bet he does, as smart Americans begin to peel away from all things ESPN in 2024.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.