College GameDay is heading to Indiana to watch the Hoosiers take on the Minnesota Golden Gophers. It’s the same Minnesota squad that was blown out by Mississippi State, and the spread for this game is around 20 points. There was some grumbling online that GameDay would have been better served coming to Atlanta for the Florida-Georgia game, especially since it’s the only matchup this Saturday featuring two top-20 teams.
But watching the meltdown of Pat McAfee over the faintest of criticism from last week’s host, Utah, is a reminder that it’s probably best that ESPN’s College GameDay, in its current form, is better off not coming to your city.
Florida fans are better off that GameDay isn’t coming to town
Some social media accounts associated with the University of Utah had shared a student-made video that interviewed other students about their thoughts regarding GameDay being in town. Multiple students in the video referenced McAfee’s tendency to take off his shirt and joked about his over-the-top persona when making picks.
Of all the things that have been said about McAfee over the past few years, it was a very tame video.
But McAfee took grand offense to the video, and during the broadcast on Saturday, when making his pick, he referred to the video and ended his pick by saying:
“Thank you, guys. I’ll never see you again, hopefully."
It was a bit weird, but most moved on. Yet then on Monday McAfee took to the airwaves to further highlight his disdain for the video:
“And then I thought to myself, has anything like really scary happened at like a college gathering in the state of Utah recently? Like, do we think we should be amplifying reasons for why people hate my guts as a university? I don’t know.”
Pat McAfee is the voice of college football that nobody asked for
We made this critique when we did a review of his album “The Diary Of A Polarizing Figure.” The problem with Pat McAfee isn’t that he is popular. There are plenty of popular figures who are well respected.
The problem with Pat McAfee is that nothing he does promotes college football; he is simply concerned with promoting himself. When he does go viral, it’s never because of some great talking point he makes or because he added anything of value to the conversation. And because he has nothing of substance to add, he is forced to use “look at me” gimmicks where the entertainment value has long worn off.
You know how two parents will have a deep conversation and their toddler interrupts with something “very important” to say? That’s what it feels like when McAfee interrupts Nick Saban on GameDay.
But apparently, if you dare to point out these criticisms, then you are just a hater who is jealous of others’ success. McAfee’s response to the Utah video paints a narrative that he believes he is above criticism and that we should all be thankful that he uttered the name of our respective sports teams.
We aren't writing this because Pat McAfee lives "rent free" in our heads. We are writing this because if one turns on ESPN in order to see something related to SEC football, Pat McAfee is shoved down our throats.
We miss the days of Lee Corso when GameDay was a celebration of the university itself, rather than an expectation that the university has a celebration of Pat McAfee.
So while the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party is the far more interesting game than whatever is going to take place in Bloomington, maybe it is for the better that we leave Atlanta to the adults this weekend.
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