Aaron Rodgers has had some time on his hands during the 2023 season. The future Hall of Famer was signed by the New York Jets to lead a talent-rich roster to the playoffs and beyond. Instead, Rodgers tore his achilles tendon four plays into the season and was left to help coach, mentor the quarterbacks, and hopefully rehab to try to do 2024 what was expected in 2023.
Since Covid, Rodgers has been notorious for being outspoken about the vaccine, masking, and the pandemic. Revered by the right and excoriated by the left, Aaron Rodgers has no problem inflaming either side to express his beliefs. The most recent statements by Rodgers have cost him a weekly spot on one of ESPN’s biggest new programs.
Pat McAfee left Fanduel Sports as perhaps the most popular and sought-after podcaster in the sports world. ESPN paid him millions to bring his show to the failing Worldwide Leader in hopes of revitalizing the brand. While the ratings haven’t been what the network had hoped for, McAfee continues to fine-tune his show to appeal to more viewers.
Recently, one of the former punter’s most popular weekly guests made some comments, and apparently, McAfee decided to cut his losses and cut his guest before he suffered more damage to his failing show. Aaron Rodgers has long been critical of Hollywood, the leftist media, COVID-19, and all of the ensuing hysteria that went with it. However, the comments he made when talking about Jeffrey Epstein and his soon-to-be-released client list turned out to be the breaking point for McAfee.
Wednesday, McAfee announced that viewers had seen the last of Rodgers on his usual Wednesday segment. Apparently, Rodger’s comments about Jimmy Kimmel and the Epstein list ended the weekly segment. The Jet quarterback recently joked on the show that Kimmel might want to be concerned about the Epstein list, which drew laughs at the time but threats of legal action from Kimmel later.
While it may seem more than coincidental that Disney owns both ABC and ESPN, there has yet to be a connection between the Jimmy Kimmel comments and the decision to relieve Rodgers from his Wednesday gust spot. McAfee framed it thusly: “There will be a lot of people who are happy with that, myself included to be honest with you. “The way it ended, it got really loud. I am happy that he’s not going to be in my mentions going forward, which is great news.”
McAfee ignores the fact that the vast majority of what Rodgers talks about turns out to be fact rather than conspiracy theory. If Kimmel indeed does get connected to Epstein, then will the network relent and bring Rodgers back? Based on McAfee’s comment, it is doubtful.
In any case, he continued: “Aaron Rodgers is a Hall of Famer, a four-time MVP, a massive piece of the NFL story whenever you go back and tell it he will be a huge part of it. We are very lucky to get the chance to chat with him and learn from him. Some of his thoughts and opinions do piss off a lot of people. I am pumped that will no longer be every single Wednesday of my life, which it has been the past few weeks.”
Perhaps McAfee is really fed up with Rodgers, or perhaps Disney pressured the host to put an end to the Wednesday segment. Either way, it is a suspicious move by the formerly revered sports channel. As ESPN has become more woke, programming and ratings have tanked. McAfee did little to help the situation, and if he did bend the knee to his rodent overlords, it would only hurt his reputation and ratings like so many ESPN personalities before him.
Watch McAfee discuss the matter here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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