On Tuesday, ESPN broadcast personality Pat McAfee turned his on-air apology for calling Indiana Fever rookie guard Caitlin Clark a “white [expletive]” into a confusing stammer where he tried to say he was being complimentary … and how it’s possible he was being racist towards a white person because he’s a part Italian.
McAfee’s ramble of a response immediately reminds you a quote given by the great Michael Scott: “Sometimes, I’ll start a sentence, and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way like an improv conversation. An improversation.”
It’s hard not to think about one of the more cringy episodes of The Office when watching McAfee’s perplexing apology, one where the former NFL punter looks visibly uncomfortable to the point of sweating bullets and speeds through any number of conflicting ideas like a dog with the zoomies.
He says he reached out to Clark via the Fever and that the two are A-OK, but he also refuses to acknowledge that maybe the hot takes that surrounded the expletive might’ve been a bit misinformed and irresponsible.
This comes the night after McAfee used roughly the same ugly phrase he got in trouble for while calling a professional wrestling match and the afternoon after he tweeted an apology that read more like a Dril tweet than something crafted by a crisis PR firm.
Rather than just say, “my bad, I really didn’t mean it, let me educate myself and do better,” McAfee seems both willing and unwilling to humble himself to an embarrassing mistake and just move on. It’s a confusing paradox.
It’s a bit more amicable than Stephen A. Smith’s utter refusal to cop to the reasonable idea that First Take might not have been fully interested in covering the WNBA in the past, but it still feels hesitant to fully own the totality of the mistake and anxious to get on with the rest of the “progrum.”
"I utilized a descriptor that I certainly should not have used. …I utilized the words "white bitch" to describe Caitlin Clark as the superstar in Indiana. Now, when I was saying it, I legitimately meant it in a complimentary fashion." – Pat McAfee. pic.twitter.com/dWCIy4Jend
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 4, 2024
McAfee is trapped, like us all, in a constant feedback loop that requires the loudest voices in the “Embrace Debate” sports media room to chirp in on whatever is going viral in the world because that’s what drives viewership, listenership, clicks, shares, all that fun.
As one of ESPN’s flagship talents, he’s basically stuck puffing out his chest and bellowing out whatever he’s capable of opining in the most sensational fashion because that’s what his audience expects.
Like many people who are just now tuning in to the WNBA, McAfee stumbled into the discourse, wholly unprepared to deal with the difficult conversation about Clark’s arrival and her run-in with Chicago Sky veteran Chennedy Carter.
ESPN’s Monday featured discussions on the Clark/Carter hard foul featured the best and worst that comes with discussing sensitive topics like this, with the best of it coming from people who have a firm grasp on the nuances of the WNBA and a level-headed approach to how those nuances interact with each other. McAfee found himself looking like the court jester.
McAfee’s Monday blindfolded belly flop into the Clark discourse did speak to an unsubtle truth about what happened over the weekend on the hard foul. Most people found Carter’s move unnecessary, but McAfee cracked open the ugly angle to this that white audiences feel Clark is being treated unfairly because she’s white, and the rest of the WNBA should just be grateful she’s there and bringing in all the money and eyeballs. It’s icky and unhelpful.
Monday's Pat McAfee Show opened with a Caitlin Clark PowerPoint:
"I would like the media people that continue to say, 'This rookie class, this rookie class, this rookie class'. Nah, just call it for what it is — there's one white bitch for the Indiana team who is a superstar." pic.twitter.com/psGNQXts5O
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 3, 2024
Very thoughtful, emotionally honest responses from ESPN talents like Monica McNutt, Elle Duncan, Chiney Ogwumike and Rebecca Lobo did a much, much, much better job actually dealing with the nuances of the situation than McAfee’s ill-informed grievance politics.
There was an earnest influx of perspectives between those four women, ranging from an acknowledgement of Clark’s justified popularity and the vital need for other women in the WNBA to be respected in how they’ve propped up the league. They were able to grapple with how Carter’s move was unnecessary, but also not the end of the world, not all that uncommon with the WNBA’s past or indicative of how the rest of the league operates.
McNutt’s comments hit particularly hard, arguing that Clark’s arrival may well cause some jealousy and frustration, if only because people are human and the women who have built the league up for the past few decades might feel a little understandable resentment to the gobs of endorsement deals and fawning that Clark received before even stepping on an WNBA court.
All of them gave Clark her very deserved flowers while discussing all the complicated variables in this situation with class and grace and treating all of its players fairly and with proper context.
Our sports media atmosphere, of which McAfee has skyrocketed to the summit, is not built for these types of conversations, if only because they’re typically dominated by uninformed men parroting the same, tired ideas because that’s what their general audience is used to hearing.
ESPN would be wise to continue to amplify women, women with WNBA experience in particular, to discuss Clark, particularly because they’re much more capable of nuance, empathy and brutal honesty than the folks who started watching WNBA social media clips a month ago.
However, we’re stuck with McAfee, and he’s stuck talking about things he doesn’t fully understand. We don’t need his show cancelled and his career ended when he screws up; we just need him to understand the gravity of his platform and do a much better job.
For McAfee, apologizing means listening and actually growing past your mistake. Trying to villainize him doesn’t help; he’s clearly at least somewhat remorseful for what happened and clearly worried about the pushback from his jughead broadcast flub.
If he’s genuinely remorseful for what happened, he needs to just say he’s sorry and let smarter people than him educate him on how to do better in the future. For once, the loudest guy in the room would do well by just saying sorry and shutting up.
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