ESPN executive vice president Mike Foss forged an alliance with Pat McAfee in 2023, facilitating the millennial-aged executive’s impressive advancement within the company. That’s how it works at ESPN. If an exec links up with an ascendant talent, they rise alongside the star. So you can perhaps take Foss’ provocative appraisal of McAfee with a grain of salt.
At the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit, Foss said of McAfee:
It's funny, I think he might be a journalist at heart. I think what you find as he puts the show together each day and something piques his interest, he's got the rolodex, so he … has built access that a lot of people don't have the ability to do.
Yes, there’s diving board McAfee, but there’s also shoe leather McAfee. I’m less critical of the comment than I am amused at what bait it is to McAfee-averse sports journalists (we’ll get into that). At the same summit, Taylor Rooks of Amazon Prime Video’s NBA coverage and Thursday Night Football coverage, defended her journalistic practices.