ESPN’s Pat McAfee announced Wednesday that Aaron Rodgers would not appear on his daily sports talk show for the remainder of this NFL season following the quarterback’s controversial comments regarding Jimmy Kimmel.
A day after the New York Jets QB appeared on The Pat McAfee Show in an attempt to perhaps sidestep a lawsuit, McAfee told his audience, “So ‘Aaron Rodgers Tuesdays’ Season Four is done. There are gonna be a lot of people happy with that, myself included. The way it ended, it got real loud. I’m happy that’s not gonna be my mentions going forward, which is great news.”
McAfee’s announcement wasn’t a complete surprise and might have been an empty gesture: Rodgers’ contracted appearances previously ran weekly during the NFL regular season, which came to a close this past Sunday. Still, the sports talk show made it seem like his decision — “I’m running my show, I keep my creative rights, 100 percent” — was the result of the bad press and inter-company mayhem that swarmed the show after Rodgers insinuated that Kimmel might be on Jeffrey Epstein’s guest list, and thus essentially implying that the late-night host was a pedophile.
“We have messed up in that particular aspect, by ‘we’ I mean we’re a conversation show, people are having conversations, we live in a country that has freedom of speech, but also you’re going to have to deal with the consequences of your freedom of speech,” McAfee said.
“So we have given a lot of people who were waiting for us to fail a lot of ammo in things to attack us for over the last week, and we would love to get back to point where we move on and continue to silence all the haters.”
However, McAfee didn’t comment on Rodgers’ role on the show going forward into next season, and though he defended the QB’s football acumen, he admitted he’s “pumped” not to have to deal with Rodgers’ non-sports commentary for the foreseeable future.
“Aaron Rodgers is a Hall of Famer. He’s a four-time MVP. He’s a massive piece of the NFL story,” McAfee added. “We are very lucky to get a chance to chat with him and learn from him. Some of his thoughts and opinions piss off a lot of people, and I’m pumped that’s no longer gonna be every Wednesday of my life, which it has been for the last few weeks.”
After Rodgers’ initial comments last week, Kimmel quickly responded on Twitter, stating he’d never “met, flown with, visited, or had any contact whatsoever with Epstein, nor will you find my name on any ‘list’ other than the clearly phony nonsense that soft-brained wackos like yourself can’t seem to distinguish from reality.” Kimmel appeared to threaten legal action as well, saying, “Your reckless words put my family in danger. Keep it up and we will debate the facts further in court.”
On Monday, Kimmel took aim at Rodgers with his opening monologue, and the quarterback explained his comments — but did not apologize — on Tuesday’s McAfee show.
“I totally understand how serious an allegation of pedophilia would be. So [for] him to be upset about that, I get it,” Rodgers said. “I’m not stupid enough — even though you think I’m an idiot, and you’ve made a lot of comments about my intelligence — but I’m not stupid enough to accuse you of that with absolutely zero evidence, concrete evidence. That’s ridiculous.”
He continued, “So I’m glad, and I think we can agree on something, it’s that, one: Those crimes are heinous. And two: I’m glad you’re not on a list because those who are on this list — and this I think we can agree on — that, at minimum, there should be an inquiry into their involvement. Especially if they went to the island. And at maximum, there should be an investigation into it.”
