ESPN host Pat McAfee recently came under fire from fans after he publicly expressed feeling uncomfortable about hosting ESPN’s College GameDay at the University of Utah campus. When called out online for his behavior, McAfee reacted defensively by saying he’s taking a break from X (formerly Twitter), prompting further comments from fans and sports media personalities calling him “soft”.

Now, McAfee’s former CBS colleague, David Shepard, has expressed his own take on the controversy. On November 6, Shepard shared an X post by Awful Announcing that called out his former colleague, noting that fame seems to have changed the host’s tolerance for criticism.

“I used to board op Pat’s Show back when he was at CBS Sports Radio. I think fame can change a lot of people, it has certainly changed him. I remember Pat being incredibly resilient and thick skinned,” Shepard wrote. “Pat is a tremendous talent and has a platform that 99.9% of us in the media would dream of. He deserves all the credit in the world for that, but with that huge platform is inevitably going to come opposition. Hope the right people around him are conveying this OVERLY SENSITIVE position is not going to help him long term.”

Shepard looked back on their time together at CBS, pointing out that the host’s massive fame and media influence have drastically changed his temperament. His comment also echoed sports media personality Katie Nolan’s stance, who felt that McAfee acted “irresponsibly” and expected everyone else to be responsible for his “emotional well-being.” 

Similar to Shepard, Nolan acknowledged McAfee’s impact on sports journalism, but believed that it was exactly why he couldn’t be so offended by every little criticism of him. She pointed out that part of being a prominent media personality was maintaining their cool while dealing with negative comments.

The original controversy began after the University of Utah’s official social media account posted a video ahead of McAfee’s visit to Utah for ESPN’s College GameDay broadcast. The video showed a few Utah students impersonating McAfee and telling him to keep his shirt on during his segments.

Rather than taking the video for the lighthearted ribbing that it was intended to be, McAfee went on to express how uncomfortable the comments made him, declaring on the GameDay episode that he did not want to return to Utah again. He even went on to compare the students’ remarks to real-world security concerns and referenced the 2025 fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University.

During the same episode, he also turned down a profile request from CBS’s 60 Minutes, insisting he was skeptical the program would treat him well. Instead, he went on to declare that he would reject any and all requests from media outlets asking to profile him, which further incensed NFL fans and his sports media peers alike.

After being bombarded by online criticism, McAfee decided to stay off social media altogether, but not before stating exactly what he thought of the controversy he was at the center of.

“I’ve been staying off of X. Just been pretty mean on there, you know, and everybody’s calling me a snowflake and everything,” McAfee said on The Pat McAfee Show. “It’s like, ‘Okay. F***. All right.’ I guess this is me being soft.”

The backlash against the ESPN host also led critics, including Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, to call for him to be voted off College GameDay. McAfee later mocked the comment, acting surprised and referencing the midterm elections, pointing out that his Saturday morning job was being treated as though it were actually on the ballot.