Gordon MonsonChill, everybody chill.
On the one side, ease up. On the other, it’ll be OK.
If the University of Utah and everyone connected to the school could handle BYU quarterback Max Hall proclaiming — after the Cougars beat the Utes way back in 2009 — that he hated Utah, hated everything about ‘em, it and they can handle what Pat McAfee said on Saturday and Monday.
A friend of mine, a longtime columnist in Chicago, once told me that whenever people used to criticize or ridicule his town, Chicago would just kind of sniff, shrug its broad shoulders and stay confident in who and what it was. It wasn’t perfect; it had its problems, some of them serious, and everyone there knew that, too. But, yeah, whatever. No harm, no foul.
“We’d just hang a medal around it,” he said, “wear it like a badge of honor, put a trophy on whatever the joke or criticism was, place a potted plant on it, and keep on going.”
Put a potted plant on it, Utah. It’s no big thing.
(Rich Storry | ESPN Images) Pat McAfee and Morgan Boring at College GameDay at the University of Utah.
As you know by now, McAfee came to Utah with ESPN’s “College GameDay” crew, did the show from campus on Saturday and had, what in his mind was, a “weird” experience. He was made to feel, as he said it, “uncomfortable.” He was made fun of by a couple of students in a video posted on the school’s social media account, kids who called him “corny” and “creepy,” and he didn’t appreciate that a platform associated with the university put that out.
He subsequently said on his show on Monday: “I’ve enjoyed this college football season — did not enjoy the University of Utah. Did not enjoy it.”
He said he walked up to the set and said: “I think I hate this place. I think I hate this place. But their football team — good at football. Really, really good at football. But I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. See you. Goodbye. I’m out of here.”
He also said: “I’ll hopefully never go to that place. I think I have COVID or something whenever ‘GameDay’ goes back, if I’m still a part of ‘GameDay.’”
Was McAfee’s reaction over the top? Yes, it was. Just like Hall’s reaction 17 years ago was 10 steps too far.
Utah features more than just a fine football team. It’s a great school, where fantastic research and educating is done, with a tremendous faculty, along with a large and diverse student body. A smattering of those students are idiots who sometimes say and do dumb things. Fans are gonna fan. But the university is not a hellhole. It’s nothing to hate.
(Rich Storry | ESPN Images) Desmond Howard, Rece Davis, Pat McAfee, Nick Saban, and Kirk Herbstreit holding hands on the set of College GameDay Built by the Home Depot at the University of Utah.
That said, the reaction to McAfee’s hyperbolic comments by some of those who, for good reason, feel a deep affinity for the school has been, in some cases, hot-hot-hot, bordering on severe.
There’s nothing uglier than hate on hate.
Maybe a number of folks don’t like McAfee, don’t like what he adds to or subtracts from the “GameDay” broadcast. All good. But if he didn’t like what he experienced at Utah, and doesn’t like Utah now … so freaking what?
He’s a former NFL punter who now is paid a whole lot of money by ESPN to do a show, to entertain, to sometimes make judgments on and, ironically enough, ridicule certain people, certain places, certain entities.
He said his criticism of criticism put upon him by others centers not on those who rip or laugh at him; rather, it’s on the institutionalizing of that disapproval by the school itself — even as he was on the brink of promoting Utah as a part of the show’s backdrop.
Utah officials have since apologized.
(Rich Storry | ESPN Images) Pat McAfee and head coach Morgan Scalley of the Utah Utes on the set of College GameDay Built by the Home Depot at the University of Utah.
Whether that has eased or will eventually ease the negative vibes that penetrated McAfee’s somewhat thin skin is unknown. Maybe he’ll come around. Maybe Utah can invite him back, completely separate from “GameDay,” and demonstrate for him all the good things the school is and all that it offers, inside and out of football.
I get it. Sometimes criticism is warranted. I’ve spent part of my career sending it out and other parts praising what should be praised. I’ve dished out both and received both myself.
But outright nastiness, the nastiness of hate, serves nobody.
The former punter and current broadcaster will decide over the short and long haul for himself how he feels about Utah. Utah and everyone who has affinity for it can do likewise back at him.
Utah and those who love it also can sit secure in their own value, come what may.
With any luck, that second group will be self-assured enough to hear what McAfee said and says and hang a medal around it, wear it like a badge of honor, put a trophy on it, place a potted plant on it, and keep on going.
