Ex-ESPN Star Blasts Network Over Pat McAfee. And Many Fans Probably Agree With Her.

ESPN made another big move announcement this week when it shared that Pat McAfee will be an analyst on Monday Night Countdown this NFL season. The move makes sense since he has become one of the biggest stars at ESPN, but it also led to lots of people wondering just how much Pat McAfee we need in our lives.

Well, one former ESPN star feels the same way and she shared her very honest feelings about it this week. Linda Cohn, the longtime SportsCenter anchor who retired from ESPN at the end of June after spending 34 years with the network, asked a simple question about McAfee and the amount of time he’s going to be on our televisions during the upcoming football season.

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“I admire it all, but admiring what Pat McAfee has accomplished doesn’t mean I believe he needs to be everywhere at every time,” Cohn said on her podcast, The Linda Cohn Show, via Awful Announcing. “Because, yeah, ESPN wants Pat McAfee to be everywhere at every time. How much Pat McAfee is enough Pat McAfee?! The answer apparently was more.”

McAfee will be very busy this fall. He has his daily show on ESPN, he appears on College GameDay every Saturday and now he’ll be on the pregame show every Monday night. There have also been reports that ESPN is trying to get an alt-cast led by McAfee for MNF games.

That’s a lot.

“So, let’s review your potential Monday during the NFL season, which is just a couple of weeks away,” Cohn said. “Three hours of Pat’s daily show, ‘The Pat McAfee Show,’ from the game site. Then, Pat joins ‘Monday Night Countdown’ before the game. And then, on certain nights, potentially, his own alternative broadcast of ‘Monday Night Football.’ At this point, let’s just call it ‘Monday Night McAfee.'”

“I have to ask this: Why?! Why? I have to laugh,” Cohn added. “Apparently, if Peyton and Eli [Manning] take the night off, we cannot be left alone with the actual football game broadcast? What’s wrong with [Joe] Buck and [Troy] Aikman? Alone? Can’t we just watch them? The actual football game? I can’t stop laughing. It’s crazy, right?”

McAfee has joined Stephen A. Smith as one of the top faces for the network. ESPN loves throwing its stars on as many shows as possible, so it makes sense for McAfee to land his new NFL gig. It doesn’t mean fans have to love it, though.

“ESPN has done this for decades,” Cohn said about ESPN showing off its biggest names over the years. “They have their favorites. Let me tell you. And they make sure you know it over and over and over again. The viewers can speak up, say they don’t like it. But ESPN, most of the time, turns a deaf ear. They do it more than you know. Trust me, I was there.”

It will be interesting to see if more and more people grow tired of McAfee or if his large audience gives ESPN the numbers it’s looking for from his addition to Monday Night Countdown. With all the content available to us now it is really easy to just skip pregame shows and that could happen more if viewers at home get sick of McAfee.

Here’s hoping that we just don’t have to watch any live performances from his new album. Because nobody needs that in their lives.

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