Could we see Pat McAfee in an NFL broadcasting booth next season?
With Troy Aikman on an expiring contract at ESPN, there’s growing speculation about who could possibly replace him alongside Joe Buck, if an extension isn’t worked out. Peyton and Eli Manning have been floated as one option. Tony Romo, who could be on the outs at CBS, has been floated as another. Greg Olsen remains a fan favorite in the No. 2 booth at FOX, too.
But what about Pat McAfee?
McAfee is being floated as a Dennis Miller-type of broadcaster for ESPN, if the Worldwide Leader in Sports wants to go down that route again.
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During a recent episode of “The Press Box,” The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis discussed the HBO documentary about comedian Dennis Miller’s two-year stint in the Monday Night Football booth.
Curtis suggested that if ESPN was going to go that route again, McAfee would be the ideal pick.
“I hesitate to say this because it’s like saying ‘Candyman’ and something bad appears. You know the person who would actually cross this divide?” Curtis asked Joel Anderson. “Pat McAfee. He’s kind of that guy for our time. Oh man. And if Troy Aikman doesn’t get re-signed at Monday Night Football, again, Candyman, Candyman, I’m sorry, I’m sorry to all of humanity if I’ve done something here.”
“To me, putting him in the booth would be getting football, plus funny. I mean, he played football; he can talk ball, we know that. Yeah. And then you’d be getting all the off-the-top-of-the-head comedy stuff. I’m sorry. I apologize. But that, that to me is as close as we get to Dennis Miller.”
Miller, a former “Saturday Night Live” cast member, spent just two seasons in the booth, before getting fired.
“I just wonder if he’s hanging on because that’s on the table someday,” Anderson said of McAfee’s stint at ESPN. “He’s already on the pregame show.”
“To me, them not signing Troy Aikman is still just insane,” Curtis responded. “Like, if that didn’t happen, that’d be such a course—I don’t wanna say course correction— such a swerve from what we thought was gonna happen five years ago, that it would just be a formality that both of those guys got re-signed. Joe Buck’s already been re-signed, by the way. I would say that, you know, somebody would ask that question. Somebody internally would be like, ‘Should we put Pat on this broadcast?’”
NFL fans are dreading that idea
“It’s going to happen because God hates what we’ve done to the planet so he’s punishing us. Only reason I could come up with,” one fan wrote.
“Please do it. The more they use him the more people get tired of him. Use him all the time please,” one fan added.
“If so, goodbye MNF,” one fan added.
“This is so bad that you know it’s going to happen,” one fan added.
McAfee has a much stronger football resume than Miller, of course, but he’d likely be just as polarizing of a broadcaster during a game.
