Didn’t exactly enjoy his time in Salt Lake City, eh?
ESPN brought College GameDay to Utah for the second week in a row today, setting up shop at the University of Utah ahead of their matchup with Houston after spending last weekend in Provo for the matchup between BYU and Notre Dame.
It’s obviously nice to see the show going to different campuses after spending the first few weeks at places like LSU, Alabama, Texas and Ole Miss (with a visit to Iowa in there too). And last week’s show proved why it’s great for ESPN to take the show to schools that it doesn’t visit very often: It was the third most-watched edition of College GameDay in the show’s history, and the 9.2 million viewers for the game itself was the second most-viewed Big 12-controlled game of the DECADE.
But apparently Pat McAfee wasn’t too happy with his second week in Utah.
It started last night when the University of Utah posted an Instagram video asking students to do their best impression of the GameDay host. One guy predicted that McAfee would say a “corny line” while making his game prediction, while another seemed to take issue with his tradition of taking his shirt off during the show – while imploring him to keep his clothes on:
“Bro Pat, we love you bro, but keep the shirt on. Noone’s trying to see that. We don’t care. These are college kids bro, keep your shirt on homie.”
Well McAfee clearly wasn’t impressed by the video, and even commented on it with the side-eye emoji. But things only got worse during the show’s weekly kicking contest, when a student at the university is given the chance to kick a field goal for a $1 million prize.
Last week, in addition to the $1 million put up by McAfee, Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith put up an additional $1 million in the contest, while his business partner Ryan Sweeney pledged his own $1 million, making the grand prize for the kick worth $3 million – with $1 million of that going to charity.
Oh, and the kid (dressed as Spiderman) made the kick.
Well this week’s contestant in the kicking contest was a Utah student named Morgan questioned why her prize was only $1 million.
McAfee was visibly annoyed as he explained that there were two billionaires who contributed to the prize last week…and at the end of the day it didn’t matter because Morgan missed the kick anyway.
Apparently all that left a bad taste in McAfee’s mouth, because as he was making his prediction for the game at the end of the show he didn’t seem happy about the reception they received at Utah:
“Now, I will say, the person that won the kicking raffle said $1 million wasn’t enough, and then they go on to miss. The university’s Instagram account posted a little something about me, talking a little trash last night, which I certainly love.
It’s hard to pick against this mighty Utah student section…but I’m going to do it 10 times out of 10. Give me Houston coming out of here with a big time W.”
And as he signed off, he definitely didn’t sound like somebody who wanted to return to Salt Lake City any time soon – or ever:
“I’ll never see you again hopefully.”
Yikes…
Honestly, I can’t really blame Pat. He seems like just an all-around great dude, somebody who loves college football and has done a ton to promote the sport – while also being pretty generous with the money he’s made while doing it. He gets a ton of unearned hate, for no other reason than people don’t like his style, but there’s not really any denying that he’s been great for the sport. (And this is coming from somebody who was at Marshall when he beat us three years in a row while he was at WVU).
Pat’s a good sport about all the hate he gets, but it’s really no surprise that he’s not in any hurry to get back to Salt Lake City any time soon.
