10
Loading video...
By Michael Gallagher
Sports Content Coordinator
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
As part of the five-person panel on ESPN’s “College GameDay” along with Desmond Howard, Rece Davis, Nick Saban, and Kirk Herbstreit, Pat McAfee gets a front-row seat to some pretty lively college football environments.
And while McAfee generally has good things to say about the schools he visits every Saturday, that wasn’t the case this week.
“College GameDay” was in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Saturday for the Utes’ big matchup against No. 14 Houston (a game Utah won 21-13). Though McAfee usually embraces playing the villain from time to time to rile up a certain school’s fans, how he was treated over the weekend really turned him off to the Utes’ fan base.
Read More on NCAA
...
“Did not enjoy the University of Utah,” McAfee exclaimed on show on Monday. “You know why I didn’t like it mostly? Right before I go out there, I see the University of Utah’s Instagram page — the university’s — they put out (a request), ‘Hey can you do an impression of Pat McAfee?’ One kid goes, ‘Ah, he’s corny,' another kid calls me creepy.
“If these kids would’ve done this on their own blogs — all good. … The university puts that out as I’m about to go out and do an infomercial for the place? And then I’m walking in front of thousands of people, and this is how the university feels about it? It’s an uncomfortable feeling.”
McAfee then pointed to the Charlie Kirk assassination last September at Utah Valley University as to why he didn’t feel safe after the university’s Instagram post.
“I’m getting a lot of shrapnel from a lot of places, but the university puts that out?” McAfee continued. “That’s just something I never experienced in my entire life. It set me off a little bit; it made me feel a little bit weird. Then I thought to myself has anything really scary happened at a college gathering in the state of Utah recently? Do we think we should be amplifying reasons for why people hate my guts as a university?”
McAfee’s experience with the hostile crowd was enough to turn him off to the school permanently.
“I’ll hopefully never go to that place (again),” McAfee said. “I think I’ll have COVID or something whenever ‘GameDay’ goes back if I’m still a part of ‘GameDay,’ but I did not enjoy the morning there.”
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines