They’ll never make me hate Pat McAfee.
Ok, I’ll be honest, I hated McAfee in college, but that’s because he was at WVU when I was at Marshall. But now that he’s become one of the most outspoken figures in sports media, I’ve become a big fan of the way he doesn’t really care what he says or who he offends.
And sure, I get that some people don’t like him because of his over-the-top personality or antics, but you’ve got to give him credit for not doing the bidding of his employer at the expense of sports fans.
In case you somehow weren’t aware of what’s going on with ESPN right now, parent company Disney is currently in the middle of a carriage dispute with YouTube TV, and as a result all of their networks have been removed from the streaming service since last Friday. That means no ESPN and no ABC for YouTube TV subscribers, and a bunch of pissed off sports fans who had to miss out on college football this weekend and Monday Night Football last night.
According to YouTube TV, which is owned by Google, Disney is basically trying to jack up the price for YouTube to carry their networks:
“Our current agreement with Disney has approached its renewal date, and we will not agree to terms that disadvantage our members while benefiting Disney’s own live TV products. Despite our best efforts, we have not been able to reach a fair deal, and starting today, October 30, 2025, Disney programming will not be available on YouTube TV. This means you will no longer be able to watch channels like ABC and ESPN or access recordings from these networks in your Library.”
Basically what’s going on is Disney is trying to funnel customers to their own streaming platforms like Hulu, Fubo or ESPN’s new streaming platform. And YouTube is trying to avoid having to raise the price for customers even more by meeting Disney’s demands, leaving the two sides reportedly “far apart,” despite Disney reportedly losing $5 million a day by being off of YouTube.
Meanwhile, customers are stuck in the middle between two billion-dollar corporations. Funny how that always seems to happen.
During the ongoing dispute, ESPN has turned to some of its top talent to try to put pressure on YouTube TV, creating a website for customers to contact YouTube and to tell them to keep Disney networks available.
Kinda comes across as the terrorists forcing their hostages to make propaganda.
One prominent ESPN personality who hasn’t fallen in line for the company, though, has been Pat McAfee. Over the weekend, ESPN streamed College GameDay on his Twitter account, but he’s largely stayed out of the battle between Disney and Google, notably declining to post the company’s message urging viewers to contact YouTube on their behalf.
And earlier today McAfee went off on his own coworkers for doing the company’s bidding in a battle of the billion dollar companies:
“We’re all done with it. And also, if you’re on TV, stop telling people to go to a website to save a multi-billion dollar deal. Nobody cares what you have to say.
There will be nothing that we say, or any website that we say, that will get this thing done…
A lot of people saying ‘greedy corporations.’ It’s like, yeah, need each other, especially with where sports are right now. And we’re in the middle of it, so let’s get that done. And stop asking me to go to a website. I don’t want to do that, so stop…
All you’re doing is pissing everybody off even more. So it’s like, let’s just not do that.”
Obviously McAfee is spot on here. If you go to the replies of any of the posts from ESPN or their personalities, the sentiment is overwhelmingly against Disney and on the side of YouTube TV. Even the SEC and their schools are hearing it from fans as they tried to shill for Disney too:
McAfee licenses his show to ESPN, and hasn’t been afraid to take aim at the higher ups in the company, so it’s nice to see him taking a stand – against his own coworkers – in this one too.
