Kirk Herbstreit: Pat McAfee Offered to Cover Costs When ESPN Announced Budget Cuts

Pat McAfee stepped up and offered to do the right thing.

Feb 27, 2025; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Pat McAfee watches workouts at the 2025 NFL Scouting Combine at Lucas Oil Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

The move from his own platform to ESPN was controversial at the time, but Pat McAfee has been nothing but a tremendous addition to the company in a variety of ways.

He's added juice and more excitement to College GameDay and has set the stage for a new era of sports media. Because of that, he's rubbed some feathers of the guys in suits who believe journalism or sports media should be buttoned up and done in a certain way. At the end of the day, it's sports. We're talking about games here, and McAfee has a different way of doing it.

Aside from the entertainment value he brings to the table, he's also an outstanding human. He's been known for his charity work and giving away money left and right, but the story Kirk Herbstreit recently told on the Net Positive podcast underscores how generous he is.

Class Act: After ESPN announced budget cuts affecting multiple crews, Pat McAfee heard about it and offered personally to cover the costs for the crew.

"He's like, if you guys are going to do your budget thing, I'm taking care of the crew."

Pat is the definition of a role model… pic.twitter.com/Bpkbul37Zf

— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) July 4, 2025

“Budget is always a big thing in our industry, and trying to cut back on certain things. And they (ESPN) made an announcement that they were going to cut back on this and cut back on that. We were on a Zoom, and Pat was listening to that, and even I was listening to that like ‘why are they cutting back on that? That doesn’t make any sense. And Pat decided to say, ‘Okay, if you’re going to cut back on that, I’ll cover that because the crew, the people around the show, they need to have that, they need to have that. So he was like, ‘If you guys are going to do your budget thing, I’m taking care of the crew.’ And everyone was like, wow. Upper management heard that, and they said whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We don’t need Pat to cover that. We’ll take care of that.”

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