ESPN personality Pat McAfee came under fire recently for invoking the name of convicted sex abuser Dr. Larry Nassar when lampooning Michigan State football’s unveiling of a new set of uniforms.
Pat McAfee via YouTube
To be fair, Michigan State’s alternate unis are pretty terrible. Still, the boisterous host went a little too far in the opinion of many when he sent out a tweet reply regarding the dreadful duds. McAfee joked about the jerseys by crossing a line that he probably regretted later.
McAfee posted: “I think Nassar was in on the design team actually.”
Nassar is the former team doctor of the United States women’s national gymnastics team, where he used his position to exploit and sexually assault hundreds of children and young women. He was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison. More women and girls came forward to speak, and in total 156 women and girls made statements over seven days in one of the most graphic and grotesque public hearings ever held. The horror of the victim’s stories was terrifying and scarring, so McAfee making light of Nassar was seen as inappropriate by many.
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On Monday, Pat McAfee responded to the criticism. He referenced the backlash he received on social media for the tweet and apologized to those offended.
“I don’t want to say it, because there’s an all-out onslaught against me right now, for simply linking one terrible thing from a school, with the most terrible thing from the school, to a friend in a reply tweet — talking s–t to a friend,” McAfee said on his show.
“And I do apologize, if some people took that in a different way, and spun it in their own narrative to offend a bunch of other people and kind of did that whole thing — I was simply talking s–t to my friend.
It got loud on the internet yesterday..
Larry Nassar is a terrible human being and this show has covered that pretty extensively #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/XkKydVvpHK
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) July 31, 2023
“But, does it feel like Michigan State alum[ni] are trying to silence the media whenever they acknowledge that Larry Nassar, one of the most horrible humans ever, of all-time? He was at Michigan State for 14 years, so that’s not really part of the story?”
“If that’s gonna get us canceled, it’s gonna get loud,” McAfee concluded.
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