Utah Students Called Pat McAfee Corny. The School Said Sorry. ESPN Issued a Statement

Here's what happened, as near as anyone can tell. On Oct. 24, College GameDay broadcast from the University of Utah. Before the show, the university put up an Instagram video asking students to do an impression of Pat McAfee. One student called him corny. Another called him creepy. McAfee signed off the broadcast with "I'll never see you again, hopefully," and went on his own show the following Monday to say he "couldn't wait to get the hell out."

There's a serious part, and I'll set it down plainly and leave it alone. McAfee tied his unease at the crowd to the killing of Charlie Kirk at another Utah campus last year. He has since posted threatening messages he's received, and ESPN said it supports him and takes his "very real and valid concerns" seriously. Nobody should get those messages, and no comic can make them funny, so I won't try. A man's safety isn't a bit.

The rest of it is another matter, and the rest of it is what America's been searching for. Because this is a fellow who takes his shirt off on the GameDay set, a thing he does on national television, for effect, and on purpose. He once made his living kicking a ball away from people. Now a student with a phone has said the word "corny," and it has taken an official university statement, a deleted post and a call from the administration to get things back on the rails.

The university said its goal was lighthearted engagement and that it "missed the mark," apologizing for any suggestion he was unwelcome. I've read a lot of apologies, mostly addressed to me by institutions, and it's the first I've seen for a student's opinion of a television personality's act. The students, I'd note, are still paying tuition for the privilege of having been wrong.

He wasn't done, either. On the same show, he said that if GameDay goes back to Utah while he's still on it, he might just have COVID. That's the sort of thing a man says when he has a contract and nobody around to take it away from him. Michelle Beadle went after his response on The Dan Patrick Show, other former ESPN anchors called it soft, and the ratings, according to one report, keep going up. So everybody won, except the concept of embarrassment, which has been failing for years and whose family has asked for privacy.

The show moves on to Bloomington this weekend, where the students have presumably been told what to say. It's an old rule that the louder a man tells you he doesn't care what the crowd thinks, the better he's been keeping count.