Al Michaels: Pat McAfee is 'the new King of All Media'

The rise of Pat McAfee and his talk show has been one of the great sports media stories of the last few years. Now leaving a $120 million deal with FanDuel and heading to ESPN — despite the mixed reaction from his fans — proves McAfee and Co. are a highly coveted group.

In fact, legendary broadcaster Al Michaels went so far as putting McAfee atop the media world.

“With apologies to Howard Stern, you are the new King of All Media,” Michaels joked on McAfee’s show Friday. “You understand that, right?”

McAfee has taken an unconventional route to becoming a media darling. The former Indianapolis Colts punter and placekicker started out with Barstool Sports before taking his show over to FanDuel. Last year, he signed a four-year, $120 million with the sportsbook to back his YouTube show. McAfee has quite the following, and his unique style makes him stand out from other sports talk shows.

That’s one way to put it, at least. Michaels — the one-time voice of Monday Night Football — offered a different way of looking at it.

“There are so many brands of sh–, you just happen to have a better brand of sh–,” Michaels said. “You know that. Maybe the best.”

In addition to his daily show, McAfee has become a staple of ESPN’s College GameDay, joining the show as a full-time analyst last season. He maintained his unpredictable persona, too, and perhaps most exemplified that by doing a backflip into the Tennessee River live on the air.

Starting this fall, he’ll have an even bigger presence on the network as part of a massive deal with ESPN. Terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but The New York Post’s Andrew Marchand reported it could be “more than eight figures per year.”

McAfee had been teasing a big move for some time during #UpToSomethingSZN, and that came to an end with the ESPN announcement. He made the news official in a 5-minute video on his Twitter page shortly after Marchand’s report came out, and he has made it clear he doesn’t plan to “change a damn thing” after the move.

“We ain’t changing a damn thing,” McAfee said. “That was literally the starter for every conversation with everybody this up to something season.”

That said, the reaction might not have been what the former West Virginia star expected.

“It’s been tough to go over the mentions,” McAfee said on Thursday’s episode, via Awful Announcing. “It has been tough out there. I don’t think I expected that. That was a miscalculation. … I think the reason I didn’t expect it is because it didn’t even cross my mind. … I feel like our people are the ones that were most mad. It’s like, ‘Hey, we have a good history, do we not?’”