Up To Something Season has officially concluded, Pat McAfee said on Monday’s edition of The Pat McAfee Show. He promised a major announcement sometime in the next 10 days.
This revelation comes just days after McAfee and his wife welcomed their first child into the world and shortly after McAfee was seen taking various meetings around Los Angeles. Akin to Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, McAfee has represented himself and his own entity throughout the negotiating process – and now, he has found a deal. He previously called the move “industry changing.”
“This is big,” McAfee said. “It is very large. I think some would call it historic…Just know that we are thankful for everybody and yeah, it’s probably going to be in books someday. I’m very, very fortunate, happy, lucky, thankful [and] grateful.”
When folks hear about this chapter of our company’s existence.. I think yinz are gonna be proud of what I’ve been up to
Apparently.. Some really cool stuff can happen if you have an incredible crew around you and a belief in something.. We love sports. We love bringing people… pic.twitter.com/ASTm5xy5NY
McAfee had posted a photo of himself with Bob Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, but he has kept a preponderance of his business proceedings concealed. He reportedly took six meetings in Los Angeles, and has seemingly conversed with a variety of other decision makers in sports media. McAfee’s goal going into this “Up To Something Season” was to find a network that would give him a better work-life balance while continuing to keep the show free to view on YouTube, with Amazon and Google being rumored as potential landing spots.
“There’s a lot of big time humans I was having conversations with that I could have never expected to be having conversations with, and everybody was so kind [and] so nice,” McAfee said. “[I am] thankful for everybody at all [the] places that I [talked] to. We found the right direction for us, and it’s going to be pretty large, I think.”
The former NFL punter has fostered a successful media career, hosting his own digital program and appearing as an analyst on various ESPN football programming. In fact, McAfee and members of his show participated in several alternate broadcasts, including on the College Football National Championship titled Field Pass with The Pat McAfee Show. NFL national insider Ian Rapoport is a frequent guest of the program, and he appeared in the show’s Indianapolis studio, yet was oblivious to just what the announcement was.
“The reason why all this is happening is because how good the boys are,” McAfee said to Rapoport. “If they would have told you, that would go against everything that they are and we are, and it would be a reason why we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re about to announce that we’re doing.”
McAfee was previously a member of Barstool Sports, joining the company upon his retirement from professional football in 2016. He left the entity two years later to create his own production business and eventually began broadcasting his show on the radio syndicated by DAZN and Westwood One. The show transitioned to satellite radio on Sirius XM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio and remained on its airwaves until August 2022, during which McAfee inked a four-year endorsement deal with FanDuel.
He promised that his show will always remain free and never be behind a paywall when speaking about the potential of exiting his FanDuel deal early. NBCUniversal, FOX Corporation, The Walt Disney Company, YouTube and Warner Bros. Discovery are all holding their upfront events next week in New York City where new programs and acquisitions are frequently divulged to the public.
Is all of the consternation and hand-wringing about flex scheduling much ado about nothing? Ian Rapoport was on with Pat McAfee Tuesday and said despite the NFL owners voting to bring flex scheduling to Thursday Night Football, it isn’t the weekly threat some are making it out to be.
“I would say this from what I know of this, I would still be surprised if any game was flexible,” the NFL Network insider said. “I would be surprised if any game was flexed because they don’t want to use it.”
Flex scheduling in Sunday Night Football is used to create the best matchups in the league’s marquee window. With the option coming to Mondays and Thursdays this season, Rapoport says the bar for justifying moving not just kickoff times, but days, is going to be high.
Thursday Night Football has the most restrictions. The league will have to announce any moves almost a month ahead of when the game actually kicks off. When McAfee pointed to the Pittsburgh Steelers’ visit to New England in Week 14 as a prime candidate to be flexed out of Thursday night, Rapoport outlined a very specific scenario where he could see it happening.
“It’s not going to be like, ‘Well, we have a little bit better game, so maybe we’ll do that,’” he said. “It’s going to be like, ‘Okay, we have Mason Rudolph starting versus Bailey Zappe. Like, no one will watch this. We have to move.’ That’s to me, that’s under the circumstances that you’d see a flex.”
Last season, the matchups for Thursday Night Football were especially bad in some weeks. Al Michaels even made reference to it on the air during games. Having flex scheduling could help to avoid that, but Rapoport says the option is about protecting Amazon in the event circumstances around a game change drastically, not simply placating critics.
“I think basically is the kind of thing where, like, they want it available, but it’s only going to be used if they have literally no other choice.”
Rick Hummel has passed away after a brief illness. The legendary baseball journalist was 77 years old.
Hummel is best known for his work covering the Cardinals for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His death comes in the first season after announcing his retirement.
Covering the team was something of a dream come true for the St. Louis native. He reported on three World Series wins and seven National League pennants. He was recognized by the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.
The 2022 season was Hummel’s last of a 51-year run covering the team for the Post-Dispatch. It wasn’t the end of his career though. He went to Jupiter, FL in February to cover spring training as a free lance writer for a number of different outlets.
Rick Hummel will certainly be missed by his friends and loved ones. He will also be missed by the Cardinals community, who already mourned the loss of Mike Shannon earlier this month.
While we know that Pablo Torre is going to have a new show with Meadowlark Media in the future, he hasn’t exactly been specific as to what it will be. We continue to look for bits and pieces from Torre about his show that will begin sometime before the NFL season begins.
Torre was a guest on The Rights To Ricky Sanchez: The Sixers Podcast with Spike Eskin and Michael Levin (around the 22 minute mark) and he said that he is at Meadowlark to follow his curiosities and he thinks back to the story he wrote for ESPN The Magazine in 2015 about the 76ers and trust the process serves as a guide to him.
“I have things I am obsessed with that I want to explain to people, and I believe there are stories in sports and in the national cultural conversation that either could use a little more smarts or a little more humor and I want to figure out how I can be the place where you find smart and funny when it comes to storytelling in sports in a narratively informed way. I’m being very vague about it, but the magazine sensibility of that process story is something that serves as a North Star in my brain.
“How do I tell a story that people from afar are maybe somewhat familiar with, but can get under the hood of to articulate and reveal and report some things that serve as something close to a definitive treatment to it?”
One thing that Torre thinks is a big opportunity in the media landscape is that there is an open lane to tell sports stories in the audio format.
“There’s a lot of narrative series, some of which are excellent, but in terms of an always-on show where someone’s job is to follow a curiosity down the rabbit hole and/or tell a story/interviewing a person as a way of explaining something larger. I want to bring a viewpoint that because sports is so much about living or dying with these games as we have been, I want to take the position of also being able to zoom way in and way out and engage with the news cycle, but not be beholden to it.”
Torre isn’t going to be able to cover everything in sports, but he said that he wants to take a complicated story and make it simpler for the listeners.
“My goal is not that I’m going to cover everything, but I’m going to give you stories of a different genre, stories that explain and go deeper. I want to make this fun, but also premised on contextualizing complicated stories in a simpler way.”
Ricky Keeler is a reporter for BSM with a primary focus on sports media podcasts and national personalities. He is also an active podcaster with an interest in pursuing a career in sports media. You can find him on Twitter @Rickinator555 or reach him by email at RickJKeeler@gmail.com.
