Pat McAfee is officially the face of ESPN.
On Wednesday, the network announced that McAfee will join its “Monday Night Football” pregame show this season and host his daily program live from the site of the matchup. The move also positions McAfee to serve as a main analyst on ESPN’s pregame and halftime coverage of the network’s first Super Bowl broadcast in February.
McAfee will continue his role on “College GameDay.” In doing so, he will become the first ESPN personality to work both “GameDay” and “Monday Night Countdown,” the network’s two most important live shoulder programs.
Further, ESPN and McAfee are in discussions to renew his current agreement with the network for around $60 million a year, sources confirm to OutKick.
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For much of the past decade, Stephen A. Smith held the unofficial but consensus title of “face of ESPN,” just as Chris Berman did before him. But Smith’s stature inside ESPN is not what it was. He is no longer part of the network’s NBA Finals coverage. “First Take’s” ratings have slumped. The perception of Smith now falls somewhere between repetitive and uninformed.
Smith’s waning influence inside ESPN is perhaps best demonstrated by his inability to retain his preferred co-stars. For four straight offseasons, he has fought to keep at least one of Michael Irvin, Shannon Sharpe and Ryan Clark. ESPN let each of them go.
It was also McAfee, not Smith, whom ESPN tapped to host a live alternative broadcast from Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden in June.
More importantly, McAfee embodies ESPN’s newfound direction. Smith does not.
Stephen A. represented the ethos of an era built around hot takes and manufactured conflict. During a company town hall earlier this month, ESPN EVP Mike Foss instructed the company’s talent to move beyond “embrace debate” and instead “embrace authenticity.”
Translation: Be more like McAfee and less like Smith.
McAfee’s appeal is rooted in an entirely different philosophy of sports programming. His show is overwhelmingly celebratory. He and his cast of producers and friendly guests spend less time scolding athletes and more time promoting the games, personalities and absurdities that define the interest in American sports.
“The Pat McAfee Show” leans into the irrational excitement, anxiety, tribalism and anticipation of fandom. Sports fans are the target demographic.
That formula may sound obvious. At ESPN, it qualifies as something of a breakthrough.
For too long, the network programmed toward a niche audience of viewers who were “awakened” to the supposed social injustices lurking beneath American sports. ESPN routinely filtered athletic rivalries through racial politics, whether Caitlin Clark vs. Angel Reese or Josh Allen vs. Lamar Jackson.
Whatever financial rewards Smith received for thriving during that iteration of ESPN, the era damaged the network’s reputation and shrank its broader appeal.
At this point, Smith resembles a musical act whose prime has passed, but whose record label keeps extended for one large contract too many.
By contrast, ESPN is investing in McAfee because the network failed to build someone like him.
That’s an important distinction. McAfee did not need ESPN to make him a star. He arrived as one and forced ESPN to make room for him.
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Last week, ESPN college football contributor Josh Pate spoke to OutKick about McAfee’s impact on sports media and why everyone else is now playing catch-up.
“Pat McAfee, to me, when you mention that name, you have to mention that name, and then you have to stop,” Pate told OutKick. “That’s the end of any sentence that he’s in.”
Pate compared McAfee’s impact on sports media to Stone Cold Steve Austin’s impact on professional wrestling during the Attitude Era.
“And I remember, you know, since that Attitude Era, late ’90s, when I would have been a kid growing up, since that era, there’s been this whole industry that’s scaled and blown up about retrospectively looking back at that era,” Pate said.
“One of the concepts that always stood out to me and slapped me in the face, because I can relate to it, I can apply it to my professional life, is when people talk about the impact Steve Austin had on the industry of pro wrestling, they don’t talk about him as just, no doubt, like, there have been big stars before. There have been guys who made a lot of money.”
ESPN will try to build on McAfee’s momentum this fall with the debut of “Bussin’ with Pate” feaurting Pate, Will Compton and Taylor Lewan, airing Fridays from college football campuses.
Like McAfee, Pate and the co-hosts of “Bussin’ with the Boys” built large, valuable audiences independently of traditional network media. They now command audiences, particularly in coveted demographics, that legacy networks have struggled to capture.
Hence the partnerships.
For all of ESPN’s blunders, executives Mike Foss and Burke Magnus have established a coherent vision for what comes next. The new regime wants less virtue signaling, racial fixation and compulsory culture warring.
Unlike the previous regime, that vision follows viewer demand, both on linear television and across digital media. ESPN ceded ground to brands like Barstool, OutKick and The Ringer while previous executives tried to dictate what sports fans ought to care about.
The audience noticed. So did the competition.
That is not to say the McAfee-led era of ESPN won’t have detractors. It already does.
But notice who is complaining. It’s not sports fans raging on Threads. It’s the sports media establishment. Among those most irritated by McAfee’s expanded presence on Monday Night Football are Dan Le Batard and reporters from Sports Illustrated, Yahoo, and CBS.
That cohort disapproves of ESPN pivoting away from identity politics and back toward fandom. McAfee’s friendly association with President Trump, despite not being political in nature, has added to the consternation among the media’s self-appointed hall monitors.
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Still, the outrage shouldn’t phase ESPN decision-makers.
The disconnect between sports journalists and sports fans is profound. Commentators like Le Batard and Jemele Hill worry that ESPN will prioritize popularity more and skin color less. For viewers, that’s step forward.
Pat McAfee’s ascension represents a transfer of cultural influence inside the most powerful brand in sports media. The fans and viewers have taken back control.
They, not the executives, made McAfee the face of ESPN.
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