Pat McAfee Adding Kendrick Perkins To Show Justifies 'Sell Out' Concerns | Bobby Burack

Fans of the "Pat McAfee Show" accused the host of "selling out" last September when he signed a five-year, $85 million contract to license his program to ESPN.

McAfee built a brand upon irreverence and utter freedom from the gatekeepers of corporate media. Thus, fans, understandably, feared he'd have to ESPN-ize his show upon signing the eight-figure deal. 

Particularly, viewers questioned whether McAfee would soon succumb to tiresome ESPN topics (LeBron vs. Jordan) and social media-approved guests (Ryan Clark), like the various other shows on the network.

To McAfee's credit, as we argued recently, ESPN has had to adjust more to Pat McAfee than the inverse – be it calling an executive a "rat" on ESPN, continuing Aaron Rodgers Tuesdays, or engaging in an off-air dispute with Stephen A. Smith. 

That said, the antennas of previous skeptics of McAfee's move certainly perked up this week. 

Tuesday, McAfee announced that ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins is now an official member of the show. Perkins will join McAfee in studio every week for the "foreseeable future."

Perkins is excited. So is McAfee:

Whether ESPN influenced McAfee's decision to add Perkins to the lineup or not, pundits like Kendrick Perkins are the antithesis of what made the "Pat McAfee Show" the industry-leading pariah it was pre-ESPN.

McAfee crafted a show around fun, mercurial sports talk that provided fans a distraction from the DEI-induced social commentary that has infested much of the industry.  

Perkins is a symptom of the latter. 

He's another ex-jock who is light on the facts in his quest to impress Black Twitter and Disney executives. 

As a broadcaster, Perkins is best known for unjustly accusing NBA MVP voters of a racial bias against black players. His bitter, inaccuracy-laden tirade ultimately cost Nikola Jokić a much-deserved MVP award last season.

Last year, Perkins posted an unhinged, now-deleted rant on Twitter claiming that white people are "PRIVILEGED" and "SPOILED" and he and other black players are tired of biting their tongues on the topic. 

So much of Perkins' commentary is rooted in a racial bias against white players. During the football season, he accused the media of favoring Josh Allen in a nod to the (provably false) narrative that the Bills quarterback benefits from softer coverage than his black counterparts.

The addition of Perkins feels like a compromise to the ESPN honchos to add a black, far-left NBA analyst to a show featuring mostly white, apolitical NFL pundits.

As did McAfee inviting Elle Duncan on his show earlier this week. 

You may recall Duncan from the time she knifed Sage Steele behind the scenes by telling executives that Steele's "blackness" was in question. 

Or from the time Duncan protested the "Don't Say Gay" bill live on ESPN. 

Or when she called upon fathers to reject the Supreme Court decision to give abortion laws back to the states from the set of "SportsCenter."

Anyway, she's now a guest on the "Pat McAfee Show."

Pat McAfee promised his viewers he would not compromise for ESPN. His recent guest list suggests otherwise.

Ultimately, Perkins unseals the uniqueness of the McAfee brand. Viewers turn to McAfee to avoid the identity politics that have come to define the majority of ESPN programming.