Shannon Sharpe’s eventful Wednesday earned him some props.
A day after he broadcasted an ongoing sexual encounter to his Instagram Live, claimed he was hacked and later went on his “Nightcap” podcast to own up to the accidental deed, fellow ESPNer Pat McAfee stopped what he was doing to offer praise to the man known as “Unc.”
“Josh Allen seemingly put it on his back .. I’m not talking about put it on his back like Shannon Sharpe on IG Live,” McAfee said on Thursday’s “Pat McAfee Show,” pivoting mid-Bills take. “Shout out to Unc, by the way. Unc, hey, you handled it perfectly on ‘Nightcap,’ we’re all very thankful that you did instead of a fake ‘I was hacked!’ Impossible. We all knew it as impossible as it was happening, whenever the ‘hack’ happened.”
The minute-and-a-half-long clip, which made the rounds on social media, showed the ceiling of a room before the phone was flipped over, but did feature some raunchy audio.
“Didn’t see anything, didn’t see nothing, heard a lot … it was a podcast,” McAfee said to his on-air cohorts. “It might be voice actors, we don’t know, he didn’t say that was the case, but Unc, way to handle it.”
“I don’t think anybody’s ever thought of that, just an audio-only sex tape — seems like it’s pretty good,” he added.
The whole debacle was enough for Sharpe to call an emergency episode of his “Nightcap” podcast with Chad Ohocino, a fellow ex-NFLer whom Sharpe recently castigated for what he perceived as unprofessional behavior.
“Obviously I am embarrassed. Someone that is extremely, extremely private and to have one of your most intimate details – the audio – heard for the entire world to hear, I’m embarrassed for a number of reasons,” Sharpe told Ochocino, who seemed to enjoy a little of the schadenfreude.
“There are a lot of people that count on Shannon to be professional at all times and I always try to be professional at all times, even when I’m behind closed doors. … I’m very disappointed in myself, not for the act. I think there are millions and billions of people of consenting age that engage in activities, but for the audio to be heard I’m disappointed in myself. I let a lot of people down.”
McAfee, however, was not among them.
“For Unc, I hope he’s not embarrassed by the situation — don’t sound like he is — he should feel pretty good coming out of the entirety of that,” McAfee said.
Sharpe was absent from Thursday’s episode of “First Take” on ESPN but is not expected to be punished for his social media snafu, according to TMZ.