Pat McAfee and Bill Simmons are among the two biggest media personalities in sports, and the pair began a war of words this week.
It started when Simmons last month attempted an impression of McAfee on “The Bill Simmons Podcast.”
“McAfee has created a new version of how to do this,” Simmons said on his podcast, per Awful Announcing. “He starts the show, and then he’ll be like, ‘Cowboys, bro, I don’t know man. I don’t know. What’s going on there, bro?’ And then it cuts to his three people, and they’re like, ‘I don’t know.’ And then it will go back to him, and he’s like, ‘Not good, bro. Not good. Keep an eye on that, bro.'”
It seemed like harmless fun, but this week McAfee called out Simmons for not hitting on his Super Bowl LVIII parlay on FanDuel, which he and The Ringer founder have partnerships with.
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“I think Bill Simmons, who has it all figured out, I think he had like 8,000 people riding alongside him,” McAfee said on “The Pat McAfee Show,” per Awful Announcing. “That’s a huge number that did not hit. That’s really big. Really good, Bill. You still have it. I think we had 250,000 people or something like that. Keep running your mouth, Bill.”
It took a month but either McAfee or someone else caught wind of what Simmons said and chose to address it then. The ESPN personality has been no stranger to public beefs or controversy. Brett Favre attempted to sue McAfee for his comments on his alleged involvement in a Mississippi welfare fraud scandal; the lawsuit later was dropped. Aaron Rodgers’ association with the “Pat McAfee Show” met public scrutiny over the New York Jets quarterback’s view of the COVID-19 vaccine, which became a national story when Jimmy Kimmel got involved.
Simmons became the newest person to be caught in headlines with McAfee, and he took a subtle dig at McAfee on this week’s episode of “The Bill Simmons Podcast.”
“Everybody’s ratings are basically up except for the NBA and whoever replaced the 12 p.m. (ET) SportsCenter,” Simmons said. “If your ratings don’t go up, it’s probably a bad sign.”
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McAfee was quite aware of his ratings when he called out an ESPN executive for allegedly trying to “sabotage” his show. Even though Simmons didn’t call out the WWE “Raw” commentator by name, it’s likely McAfee won’t let Simmons have the last word in this dispute.