Pat McAfee likes Rich Eisen.<\/p>\n
He may have even played a role in helping bring the former SportsCenter star back to ESPN.<\/p>\n
But when it came to the news that Eisen is taking his eponymous daily show to the Worldwide Leader\u2019s direct-to-consumer streaming service<\/a> this fall, McAfee admittedly has some questions. Especially considering that both of their shows air at the exact same time.<\/p>\n \u201cLearned Rich Eisen\u2019s coming back to ESPN,\u201d McAfee said on Tuesday\u2019s episode of The Pat McAfee Show. \u201cI\u2019m a big fan of Rich. Rich has been very nice to me, very cool to me. He\u2019s going live, noon to 3 Eastern.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a good timeslot,\u201d one of McAfee\u2019s producers\/co-hosts could be heard saying off-camera, obviously alluding to PMS airing at the exact same time<\/p>\n \u201cThat feels very interesting,\u201d McAfee admitted. \u201cBut also, love Rich Eisen, so I am cool with whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n While that may be the case, the former All-Pro punter and his co-hosts continued to linger on the reality of his and Eisen\u2019s shared timeslot for a few more minutes. Although he remained upbeat and complimentary of Eisen, McAfee also questioned whether there\u2019s anything he should be reading into the situation.<\/p>\n \u201cNoon-to-3 is fascinating, for sure. Is that a message? I don\u2019t know,\u201d he said. \u201cBut yeah, cool, whatever. But nonetheless, we\u2019re happy Rich is back.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the key differences \u2014 at least for now \u2014 in McAfee and Eisen\u2019s agreements with ESPN is that McAfee\u2019s show is simulcast on the network\u2019s linear channel, while it appears Eisen\u2019s will be exclusive to the streaming service and seems likely to land on ESPN Radio, although that doesn\u2019t seem to be finalized as of yet. When asked if PMS will also be a part of ESPN\u2019s streaming service (which will merely be called \u201cESPN\u201d), McAfee said he thought it would be but wasn\u2019t sure, before once again referencing his and Eisen\u2019s overlap.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve got choices right there,\u201d one of McAfee\u2019s producers said. \u201cThis one or this one.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI respect it,\u201d McAfee replied. \u201cJust like the NFL Live crew on free agency frenzy day. Hey, counterprogram us, it\u2019s all good. We like it. That\u2019s how we like it. And we have responses as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n McAfee\u2019s tone vacillated between humorous and passive aggressive, but it seemed clear he feels some type of way about the Eisen situation. And although he insinuated he played a role in helping reunite the longtime NFL personality with the Worldwide Leader, he also spent much of the segment casting a jaundiced eye at their respective shows remaining in a shared timeslot.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also worth noting that news of Eisen\u2019s return came just hours after McAfee authored a cryptic social media post<\/a>, which he ended with the hashtag #UpToSomethingSZN. And while it may be too early to connect the two stories, his comments regarding Eisen\u2019s return now puts his relationship with ESPN under the microscope heading into one of the most transformational periods in the company\u2019s history<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pat McAfee likes Rich Eisen. He may have even played a role in helping bring the former SportsCenter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,6,955,2397,7991],"class_list":{"0":"post-48268","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-nfl","10":"tag-pat-mcafee","11":"tag-rich-eisen","12":"tag-the-pat-mcafee-show"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}