Doesn’t plan on going back any time soon.
Pat McAfee is opening up on his experience at the University of Utah for College GameDay over the weekend, after saying during the show on Saturday that he hoped to never see them again.
It started on Friday 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.”
(The video has since been deleted from the university’s page).
McAfee clearly wasn’t impressed by the university’s official accounts taking a shot at him, 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.
The weekend prior, when GameDay was at BYU, 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, who 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 made it clear he wasn’t happy about his experience 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.”
Obviously McAfee’s comments raised eyebrows, and today he opened up on his experience at Utah and made clear he has no intention of returning to the campus:
“Did not enjoy University of Utah. … You know why I didn’t like it mostly? Right before I go out there, I see the University of Utah’s Instagram page. The university’s. They put out a, ‘Hey can you do an impression of Pat McAfee?’ And one kid goes, ‘Oh, he’s corny.’ Another kid calls me ‘creepy.'”
McAfee says he wouldn’t had an issue with it if the students had done it on their own page, but it rubbed him the wrong way for the university to take shots at him before he headed to their campus:
“The university puts that out? Like, as I’m about to go out and do an infomercial for the place, and then I’m walking in front of thousands of these people? This is how the university feels about it? It’s an uncomfortable feeling. … That’s something I just had never experienced really in my entire life.
So it it kind of sent me off a little bit. It made me feel a little bit weird, I would say. Made me feel a little bit weird.”
He also referenced the Charlie Kirk shooting at Utah Valley University as a reason he felt the video was inappropriate:
“I thought to myself, has anything like really scary happened at like a college gathering in the state of Utah recently? Like do we think we should be amplifying reasons for why people hate my guts as a university? I don’t know. So it was just it was a lot of mixed feelings from me going out there.”
Then he says that it was the kicker complaining about the amount of money he was putting up that really sealed the deal for him:
“And then obviously the kicker goes, ‘Only one million dollars?’ Of my money. ‘Only one million dollars.’ It’s like, all right, I hate this place. I hate this place.”
McAfee says the entire experience made him uncomfortable being in front of the crowd, knowing that the university was promoting hatred towards him:
“I’ve never been more uncomfortable, honestly, in my life walking in front of a group of people after watching their university put out a post basically dogging me just moments before. …
Just didn’t like the university taking a shot at me. New York Times, do what you got to do, I guess. All the sports media tabloid people, they quote me out of context, they build a narrative about me.
But you got people that really hate my guts out there. Like really hate my guts. And I understand it, I guess. This is just a part of what life is, especially because I have a lot of things that are very hatable about me. I could certainly understand that. But the university gaslighting some of it right before I go out there to talk about your school, especially with what happened 40 miles south of Salt Lake City a little over a year ago?
It’s like, I did not enjoy that. I was very, very uncomfortable.”
And Pat says he has no intention of going back if GameDay decides to return to Salt Lake City:
“I’ll hopefully never go to that place. I think I have COVID or something whenever GameDay goes back, if I’m still a part of GameDay.”
Safe to say McAfee will be happy to return to (hopefully) a friendlier environment this weekend when GameDay returns to Indiana as the Hoosiers take on the Minnesota Golden Gophers.
