Saturday morning cartoons are back as Pat McAfee returns to College GameDay

Normally we talk about USF athletics in this space, and I promise I'll get back to that soon. However, a problem has come up and its name is Pat McAfee.

Now, I used to love Saturday morning cartoons as a kid. Roadrunner, Bugs Bunny, Rocky and Bullwinkle. You name it, I loved ‘em, but eventually moved on to other things as I grew. I guess the programming wizards at ESPN decided to bring the cartoons back, though.

Enter McAfee to join the Saturday morning College GameDay crew.

In so doing, ESPN messed up one of the closest things to perfection you'll see on sports television.

What had been must-see TV for the college football fan quickly deteriorated into a cartoon clown show, thanks to the bombastic LOOK-AT-ME McAfee’s presence on the set.

Kirk Herbstreit, who is said to like McAfee, tried to keep it real, and Rece Davis did his best to keep the show on the rails. But McAfee kept thinking it was all about him, infuriating about half of the show’s viewership, according to a poll in The Athletic.

It gave us hope that McAfee would go the way of The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican, which the rating service IMDb judged to be the worst cartoon show ever.

No such luck. After months of uncertainty about his status, McAfee announced he will return this season with more of his WWE schtick as camera-hogging. I guess that makes sense because he doubles as the announcer for WWE Raw, but ESPN should realize that the College GameDay viewer tunes in for a different reason than a rasslin’ fan.

Then again, the network has been trending toward this for a long time, starting with Stephen A. Smith. Sports Center has become increasingly difficult to watch. Maybe McAfee is just the next step in that direction.

USF football fans may remember that McAfee was West Virginia's punter when the Bulls pulled off arguably their biggest road win in school history in 2006. He later punted for the Indianapolis Colts, so I’ll assume the dude knows something about football.

He keeps that side well-hidden most of the time, however.

Maybe he feels the need to play the role of a younger hipper, Lee Corso, but it’s not working. Corso’s helmet gig is TV magic, but McAfee is just loud.
I get that a college football pregame show is not a high holy church. There should be some levity and banter among the crew, but there should also be a limit on how far that can go.

There is one encouraging sign that might mitigate McAfee’s act a little bit. Nick Saban is joining the show this season. I give it three weeks before we start reading behind-the-scenes stories of how Saban is tired of McAfee’s antics.

Yes, Saban made good and funny Aflac commercials with Deion Sanders, but he doesn’t suffer fools well. Too many times for my taste, that's exactly the part McAfee plays whether he knows it or not.