Pat McAfee and Bill Simmons are embroiled in a sports media heavyweight battle royale.
Simmons has been doing impressions of McAfee on his eponymous podcast during this football season, and it apparently struck a nerve with the former Colts punter, who fired back at Simmons on Monday to “keep running your mouth.”
Last month, on his weekly football podcast with “Cousin” Sal Iacono, Simmons broke out his McAfee impression.
“McAfee’s created a new version of how to do this,” Simmons said.
“He starts the show and then it’s like, ‘Cowboys man, I don’t know man. I don’t know. What’s going on there bro?’ And then it cuts to his like three people, and they’ll be like ‘I don’t know.’ And then it’ll go back to him and it’s like ‘Not good bro. Not good. Not — keep an eye on that bro’.”
Cousin Sal chimed in, “Two of them are looking to take their first cigarette break…”
Simmons laughed and continued in his McAfee voice: “‘We don’t have a rundown bro. No rundown on this show, bro’.”
Simmons frequently does these types of ribs on his podcast — who could forget his orgasming Cris Collinsworth impression? — but McAfee was clearly not amused.
McAfee was talking on Monday about how many people followed along with various sports personalities’ Super Bowl gambling boosts over the weekend when Simmons came into his crosshairs.
“I think Bill Simmons, who has it all figured out, I think he had like 8,000 people riding alongside of him,” McAfee said.
McAfee sarcastically said that’s a “huge number, Bill” and that “you still have it.”
“I think we had 250,000 people or something like that,” McAfee continued. “Keep running your mouth, Bill. Keep running your mouth.”
Simmons is sponsored by FanDuel, which used to be McAfee’s presenting sponsor before he left for ESPN.
McAfee has continued to rise in sports media, unbothered with the idea of accumulating enemies, but Simmons is a stronger foe than it may seem on paper.
Simmons has a lot of influence behind the scenes with the figures at the top levels of sports, media and entertainment, and he has the propensity to hold grudges for quite some time.
It would be an exaggeration to say that Simmons could snap a finger and bury McAfee immediately, but getting in a land war with him could be more perilous than it appears on the surface.