Nothing vital about ESPN’s College GameDay, nothing that isn’t manufactured or contrived or cartoonish. Nothing fun or instructive. This is plastic manhood and it’s off the rails. Nothing to be proud of here. It’s become a parody of itself.
Pat McAfee sounds like the worst asshole at the party instead of anyone who’s going to spill an intelligent thought. He sounds like a cheap version of some bro-country dumbass, so much so that he made an album of the waste. On it, he claims to be the head of some “blue collar symphony,” a poser of the worst caliber, hopefully bound for hell with that level of postering. He is what College GameDay is now. Never mind Rece Davis. Kirk Herbstreit may as well not wear a microphone. Nick Saban is an afterthought.
The con artist was born in a suburb of Pittsburgh who got even more lucky than that after winning a card game. He took the cash, got to Miami, won a kicking contest. And now if you have a fleeting desire to keep ties with college football, you have to run across his backward-cap-wearing, smarmy, vomit-inducing face at best once a year, at worst every Saturday morning on the flagship bullshit show College GameDay. You have to wonder, what if someone else had won that illegal poker game and someone with a brain, someone with class, had garnered ESPN’s attention? Also, you have to wonder, what if ESPN had the decency to maintain a roster of reporters, true analysts, journalists rather than pander to a right-wing audience? It’s no wonder the channel is the least popular it’s been in its existence.
McAfee is the epitome of “You can’t take the joke?” when nothing is funny.
McAfee played for West Virginia, which must mean in his pea-sized brain that he’s working class. On his album, a post-music stew of rotten country and the excrement of white-boy rap, he claims he “earned every penny and appreciate[d] the pay.” Horseshit. He didn’t even play quarterback. And with a record like his, he knows exactly what crowd to cater to for the chance at a dollar: douche bags with similar backwards caps and polo shirts and khaki shorts who believe they’re more grounded than the factory worker, than the woman working in the grocery store. This is not a set of songs for anyone with common sense.
The truth is he’s nowhere in the vicinity of the proletariat. Yet he was also ordinary in his own sport: he was 2-for-4 in West Virginia’s Fiesta Bowl appearance; he missed two easy field goals in WVU’s loss to Pitt that same year. Who is he?
Another attempt at a song of his asks, “Am I blessed? Or am I cursed? Am I the best? Or the worst?” Look no further for superficiality.
McAfee’s brand of persona is evil as a tyrant, evil in subtlety, banal in its insidiousness. He doesn’t see the world as it is. There’s no peace in the valley at the top of his mansion on the hill. Both he, his persona, his brand are corporate slop, and he’ll feed it to you ’till you choke.
It’s time to press the panic button. ESPN all but owns college football, but what does it matter? There’s more fun to be had with a root canal.
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