Pat McAfee’s whirlwind week had one more surprise — he’s going with the Utes.
During Saturday’s “College GameDay,” McAfee, a regular panelist, was making his pick for a College Football Playoff sleeper team.
His choice? The University of Utah — the school he’s had plenty of beef with after it posted a video of students poking fun at him for his personality on “GameDay,” including his propensity for taking off his shirt.
“You know, I don’t want to continue to perpetuate anything, especially after the week that I’ve just had, but SEC/ESPN is running wild right now, OK?” McAfee said. “I will say, you know who hasn’t been represented up here? Big Ten, SEC, Independent, ACC… How about — boom — Big 12!”
A Utah logo then appeared in the “championship sleeper” category on the board being used for the segment.
“I don’t think anybody would’ve expected this,” McAfee continued. “[Devon] Dampier could go crazy at any time. Their huge win over the Houston [Cougars] last week, I think showed me a lot. They were down going into the fourth quarter. They responded by blanketing Houston in the fourth quarter. I like [head coach] Morgan Scalley’s team out there, and I think they will be the best team in the Big 12 when it’s all said and done.”
McAfee’s whirlwind week started after “GameDay” made a trip to Utah last Saturday, and he was made uncomfortable by the video the school had posted on social media in which the students made fun of him and called him “corny.”
“The university puts that out,” McAfee said on his eponymous ESPN show earlier this week. “Like, as I’m about to go out and do an infomercial for the place, and then I’m walking in front of thousands of these people. This is how the university feels about it. It’s an uncomfortable feeling. I’m like, I’m getting a lot of shrapnel from a lot of places. The university is putting this out? That something I just had never experienced really in my entire life.”
McAfee, later made allusions to the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, which took place at Utah Valley University in September 2025. He also vowed not to return to the school.
“I thought to myself, has anything like really scary happened at a college gathering in the state of Utah recently? Like, do we think we should be amplifying reasons for why people hate my guts as a university? I don’t know,” he said. “So it was just, it was a lot of mixed feelings for me going out there.”
Utah later apologized for the video and scrubbed it from its feed.
After Front Office Sports reported that McAfee was advised by the FBI to wear a bulletproof vest, he took to X on Wednesday night to explain that the idea for the vest came from “one of the security groups.” In his lengthy post, he also showed some recent, disturbing messages he had received.
At least for one week, though, McAfee is sort of burying the hachette.
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