Kirk Herbstreit Says Pat McAfee Stepped Up to Help Avert ESPN Budget Cuts

The analyst shared an interesting anecdote about his 'College GameDay' colleague.

Pat McAfee (left) poses with Lee Corso (center) and Kirk Herbstreit (right). / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

This year may be the most important yet on College GameDay for ex-West Virginia kicker and relatively new panelist Pat McAfee—a man with legions of both admirers and detractors. As television icon Lee Corso steps away, McAfee will become the sole provider of the show's comic relief and his every move will be closely scrutinized.

However, on Wednesday, colleague Kirk Herbstreit put one notch in McAfee's column. On Net Positive with John Crist, a YouTube show with comedian John Crist, Herbstreit recalled McAfee stepping up at an unspecified time to help avert behind-the-scenes cuts at ESPN.

"Budget is always a big thing in our industry, and they were trying to cut back on certain things, they made an announcement that they were gonna cut back on this, cut back on that," Herbstreit said in a clip surfaced by Michael Dixon of Awful Announcing on Saturday. "Pat decided to say, 'If you're gonna cut back on that, I'll cover that... because the crew, the people on the show, they need to have that.'"

According to Herbstreit, McAfee's gesture seemed to catch ESPN's upper management off guard; they then changed their thinking.

"Upper management heard that and they said, 'Woah, woah, woah, woah,'" Herbstreit recalled. "'We don't need Pat to cover that. We'll take care of that.'"

This year's first episode of College GameDay—and Corso's final broadcast—is scheduled to air Aug. 30 when Texas takes on Ohio State.

Editors' note, July 7 at 3:54 p.m. ET: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of Crist's podcast as 'Next Man Up.' In fact, the name of the podcast is 'Net Positive with John Crist."

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