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ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt Discusses Pat McAfee and Perceived ‘Competition’ With FS1

Scott Van Pelt defends Pat McAfee against critics, says FS1 started fight, then quit.

Jimmy Traina

Scott Van Pelt hosts “Monday Night Countdown” with Jason Kelce, Ryan Clark and Marcus Spears.
Scott Van Pelt hosts “Monday Night Countdown” with Jason Kelce, Ryan Clark and Marcus Spears. / Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

1. Last Wednesday, ESPN held Media Day at its Bristol, Conn., campus. Folks who cover sports media, like yours truly, gathered to hear ESPN executives and talent speak and answer questions throughout the day.

The final panel of the day featured a powerhouse group that featured the best of the best at ESPN: Stephen A. Smith, Scott Van Pelt, Elle Duncan, Mike Greenberg and Pat McAfee.

It didn’t take long for things to get spicy. Smith gave a calm, collected and savage takedown of FS1 and the perceived “competition” between that network and ESPN. Smith pointed out that First Take had done 1,600 shows against FS1’s offering in the same time slot that that FS1 had gotten within HALF of First Take’s audience just twice.

Then McAfee took things over by battling people in the room over the way he and his show have been covered. McAfee took exception with coverage from The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand and grew irritated at a question from CNBC’s Alex Sherman about whether McAfee feels like he needs to adhere to “journalistic standards” on his show.

Van Pelt, who at one point chimed in to back Smith’s point about the “competition” with ESPN and FS1, had a front-row seat to it all, so I asked him for his reaction to what took place at Media Day during his appearance on this week’s SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast.

First up in my discussion with Van Pelt about that day was McAfee’s confrontational exchanges with Marchand and Sherman.

“It is Pat’s show and it’s run on our network,” said Van Pelt, “so that’s an interesting difference than a show that is on ESPN.

“And Pat clearly wants you out there to understand that. This is our show they just run it on ESPN. So the question was about journalistic standards. To ask Pat and their show to do the same show that Bob Ley would do on Outside the Lines, that's not what it is. But Bob doing Outside the Lines—and Bob's one of the all-time greats and a dear friend who I admire and appreciate—but Bob knows that my version of SportsCenter is not the one that he did. For Christ's sake, Jimmy, we're a Sportsbook, O.K. ESPN's a book. The world is different.”

Van Pelt continued:

“I'll say this. I understood the question because they're asking like, ‘should you be doing that.’ But I understand Pat's reaction because he's like, ‘look, man, we do our show, they run it on ESPN.’

“I just want to make this clear. Pat's my teammate and I got his back and I appreciate him and his guys and how they do what they do. Expecting the same type of approach to an interview from that show as you would from Jeremy Schaap, it's not the same. They're not the same.

“I think what you what you saw in the group that was up there is us saying, this is sort of a bit of a buffet what we’ve got. In the morning, you got Stephen A., who follows Greeny, who goes into Pat and that's a big part of what daytime TV has become. And then you got me late at night and Elle and Kevin Negandhi primarily before the games. We’re there afterwards. I think it was a way for us to say, here’s the buffet. This is what we got. And the beauty of the buffet, I suppose, is if that’s not for you, go to the next thing in the buffet. Does that make sense? And it’s not all the same. That that’s the other part of a buffet. There’s something that’s different for everybody.”

Van Pelt concluded:

“So I don’t know Pat well enough to speak for him, nor would I. He's a grown man who clearly speaks for himself, but I’m pretty sure that he’s going to do his show the way he and his guys want to do their show for as long as they do their show and they’re not going to be pushed in a direction to do something that they don’t want to do. And I think he is also clear about being reflective about stuff that he thinks he gets wrong. He said as much.”

After the discussion, I asked Van Pelt about his comments regarding ESPN’s “competition” with FS1.

“They put a billboard up in our neighborhood,” said Van Pelt. “They were the one for fun, Jimmy, you remember? That’s what they touted themselves as, the one for fun. Apparently we weren’t fun, I guess, and they put a billboard up in our neighborhood.

“To me, you’re making your intentions quite clear. You’re starting a fight. I want to be clear just as Stephen A. was. He didn’t raise his voice, all it was was reciting facts. It was a pretty brutal accounting of the facts.”

Van Pelt made it clear he doesn’t have any personal beef with FS1 talent.

“I root for all the people in this business that are friends of mine, but somebody with that network thought that it would be a good idea to put a billboard up and let everyone know that they were coming for us. And as Stephen A. said, they've never arrived.

“And all I said, Jimmy, again, because this is a fact, not an opinion, is that for all the people out there that cover media that were breathlessly reporting day-by-day comparisons of what their nightly studio show did head-to-head with SportsCenter, well, they don’t do that anymore because FS1 doesn’t do that anymore because they quit doing shows at night.

“Again, that’s a fact. They don't do studio shows at night. How are you going to start a fight and say you're coming for us and then not even … just quit? The same way that people tried to position Stephen A’s First Take and Undisputed as a battle. Well, it wasn’t a battle. It wasn't close.

Van Pelt then made it clear he’s ready for any challenge possible.

“I just get sick of it because all anyone does out there that talks about media or social media is take shots at us and talk about us and rip us and whatever else. So when we're sitting there that day and it's Pat and Greeny and Elle and myself and Stephen A., it’s like OK, this is this is our five that we’ve got. Get your five and we’ll play you.”

You can listen to the SI Media With Jimmy Traina below or on Apple and Spotify.

You can also watch SI Media With Jimmy Traina on Sports Illustrated‘s YouTube channel.

2. Good Morning Football’s Peter Schrager has correctly predicted the Super Bowl winner for the past three seasons. He has correctly predicted the exact Super Bowl matchup correctly in three of the past six seasons, while correctly predicting one of the teams to reach the Super Bowl in six straight years. This year, Schrager says the Chiefs will threepeat with a win over the Packers.

3. You have to hear this story from CBS’s Jason McCourty on what happened the night his twin brother, Devin, got drafted by the Patriots. I don’t want to give spoilers, but let’s just say Jason had to step in while Devin was tending to some other business.

4. This is an outstanding story by The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis ( who was a guest on last week’s SI Media With Jimmy Traina) on how Fox landed Tom Brady to be its lead NFL analyst.

5.  A little tidbit for those of you planning to bet the Ravens-Chiefs game tonight where Kansas City is a three-point favorite and the over/under is 47.

6. In addition to having 10 billion media jobs, Bill Belichick is now on Instagram. This was his first post.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: There is no better video to get you pumped up for the start of the NFL season than this one.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter and Instagram.

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Jimmy Traina
JIMMY TRAINA

Jimmy Traina is a staff writer and podcast host for Sports Illustrated. A 20-year veteran in the industry, he’s been covering the sports media landscape for seven years and writes a daily column, Traina Thoughts. Traina has hosted the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast since 2018, a show known for interviews with some of the most important and powerful people in sports media. He also was the creator and writer of SI’s Hot Clicks feature from 2007 to '13.

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