Pat McAfee’s Big Night AHT pulled out all the stops in front of an announced crowd of 12,582 fans in Pittsburgh’s PPG Paints Arena.
The variety show atmosphere saw a bevy of celebrity guests and musical performers, including Shane Gillis, Snoop Dogg, WWE’s Michael Cole, singer Jelly Roll, and the ever-available Oz the Mentalist. There were sumo wrestlers for some reason. The pièce de résistance showcased Pittsburgh sports legends, including Ben Roethlisberger, Paul Skenes, and Sidney Crosby, attempting to throw a football to give away money to lucky attendees.
Before that, the show opened with McAfee emerging from a cloud of smoke on the runway stage. He regaled his audience with a part monologue, part stand-up routine. While the topics and stories evolved, one aspect remained consistent throughout his diatribe: McAfee aired his grievances.
At this point, it’s cliche for a comedian to do a stand-up special called “Canceled” or “Cancel This!” while speaking to a huge crowd and getting millions of views on a worldwide streaming service. But that’s essentially what the opening of McAfee’s live show was.
Pat McAfee discussed the many times he’d been criticized, including when Brett Favre sued him for defamation, being booed by Canadians, and the potential legal entanglement he finds himself in regarding Ole Miss student Mary Kate Cornett. Well, kind of.
“I never ever want to be a part of anything negative that is part of anyone’s life,” he said, dancing around names and specifics. “We will try to figure that out and make some sort of silver lining in a very terrible situation.”
As he often does, McAfee tried to deflect blame for any harm he’s caused by saying that even when he messes up, it’s “in the sense of being positive and trying to make people laugh,” absolving himself of responsibility. The onus is on you to know that when he dedicates a segment to questioning your gender, he’s just joshin’ about.
He even told the packed arena full of adoring fans, “I’ve been canceled 1,000 times.” He did the thing!
McAfee also told the story of the time Aaron Rodgers appeared on his show, which was being broadcast on ESPN, and inferred that ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel was a pedophile. In his telling, the entire American political system was coming down on him.
“I had the right-leaning influencers and the right-leaning political people saying ‘Pat McAfee is getting bent over a table by Mickey F*cking Mouse.’ Goofy tagged himself in. ‘This woke coward won’t stand up for his friend,’” he said, explaining that Rodgers agreed to return to his show a few days later.
“Well, the right-leaning folks. ‘Okay, we’re not gonna make up for everything that we said about you terribly, but we’ll kinda cool off.” Let’s take that sh*t to the left side. All of a sudden, the progressive Democratic party says, ‘This ***hole needs to be deplatformed because he’s putting conspiracies on the air that are gonna kill people.’ I was told a lot of things that evening by left-leaning people. I was told a lot of things on Tuesday by the right-leaning people. And on Thursday, that countdown hit, I looked right at that f*cking camera and said ‘Hello beautiful people and welcome to our humble abode, the Thunderdome.
“Both political parties, back-to-back nights, called me the worst human on earth. If I wasn’t from [Pittsburgh], I don’t think I’d be able to show up on Thursday.”
McAfee goes out of his way to point out the many ways he’s been criticized, but never seems interested in interrogating whether or not his critics might have a point.
The former NFL punter eventually moved on from his grievances so the show could really begin, though he did make an odd reference after Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa performed. He said it was important that this event showcased people who’d dealt with “rumors on the internet.”
It was classic McAfee, positioning himself as some poor victim of an agenda against a guy who just wants to improve the world. And certainly not someone who is just as guilty of taking shots, punching down, and demanding fealty simply because of his stature.
Comparing Pat McAfee to Donald Trump feels a bit much, even to me. Still, watching the Big Night AHT, it was hard not to make the mental parallel, especially when the camera panned back to show him holding court in the middle of the arena, looking more like a megachurch pastor than a sports talk host. Few people have had better runs the last few years in sports media, but you’d never know it from the never-ending deluge of complaints and injustices that fueled his diatribes.
This originally appeared in Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter “The A Block.” Subscribe today and never miss the latest sports media news and commentary in your email inbox every M-F.