ESPN’s Pat McAfee blasted for comparing himself to Charlie Kirk

ESPN personality Pat McAfee is facing widespread mockery for apparently comparing himself to the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk as he expressed discomfort with the way he was received by students at the University of Utah before a recent trip there for “College GameDay.”

McAfee, who is a major player in GameDay’s panel and is known for hyping up the crowds that gather to watch the weekly pregame show, said he “did not enjoy” his trip to Utah.

The pundit said during his daily ESPN show he was unsettled by a post on the university’s Instagram page that featured students talking about the show’s upcoming visit to the school, some of which called him “corny” or “creepy.”

“The university puts that out as I’m about to go out and do an infomercial for this place, this is how the university feels about this,” he said. “It made me feel a little mute … a little bit weird.”

McAfee went a step further, alluding to the assassination of Kirk, which happened on the campus of Utah Valley University.

“I thought to myself, did something else happen pretty scary at a college gathering in the state of Utah recently?” he continued. “Like should we be amplifying reasons why people hate my guts? So I don’t know, it was a lot of mixed feelings.”

The University of Utah later issued an apology for the Instagram post, while McAfee was widely panned on social media for the comparison to Kirk.

“Tough guy can’t handle…critical videos from kids? So he’d last a solid 8, 9 minutes in the real world,” the former cable news pundit Keith Olberman wrote on X, calling him and an “imbecilic child – and soft.”

“Pat McAfee thinking he’s important enough to get assassinated is much funnier than anytime he’s taken his shirt off,” another user wrote on X.

Others argued no apology from the university was necessary.