ESPN’s top podcaster Pat McAfee criticized ESPN’s top athletes list as one of the worst he’s ever seen from the network.
The former NFL punter pulled no punches when talking about his network’s list of the best athletes since 2000.
The rankings of the 100 athletes had only been partially released when McAfee began his show and revealed his plans to spoil the list.
“The ESPN guys put out a Top 100 list, and it’s a microcosm of everything people hate about ESPN,” McAfee says. stated“What a show it is with the choices they made to rank the top 100 athletes of the 21st century.”
“It’s a pretty horrible list,” the former player added, saying he planned to blame ESPN’s guest, former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky, for the show’s planning.
“Is this the stupidest thing ever?”
McAfee’s deal with ESPN $85 million For more than five years, McAfee has been one of the network’s highest-paid personalities, but that hasn’t stopped him from stirring things up at the Disney-owned network. His frequent interviews with controversial quarterback Aaron Rodgers have been met with criticism from network executives, and McAfee has rarely shied away from voicing his opinions.
He said: list The report ranked 27-year-old WNBA champion A’ja Wilson at No. 90, above Super Bowl winner Aaron Rodgers (91st), Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Martinez (92nd) and soccer legend Ronaldinho (94th).
Additionally, Spanish female footballer Alexia Putellas, ranked 56th, is ranked higher than several football greats, including Zlatan Ibrahimovic (95th).
She also outdid tennis legend Venus Williams (86), WNBA trailblazers Candace Parker (60) and Lisa Leslie (74) and Jon Jones (66), a multi-division UFC champion considered by many to be the greatest of all time, whose only loss came by illegal blow.
This list is likely to please almost nobody, as it places little-known female basketball players, skiers and even cricketers in a bizarre ranking that somehow places them in the same league as athletes like Barry Bonds (38th), Derek Jeter (53rd) and Alexander Ovechkin (54th).
About 20 minutes later,The Pat McAfee ShowMcAfee asked Orlovsky, now a well-known analyst, what he thought about attempts to compile such a definitive list.
“What do you think about this list? Is this how it stands? Is it the stupidest thing in history to take a bunch of people’s idea and try to make it seem like it was one person’s concept?” McAfee asked.
ESPN’s methodology was essentially to ask “experts in each sport” to rank the top athletes in each sport since January 1, 2000. The rankings were then re-evaluated by another “panel of experts.”
Orlovsky countered that the entire discussion around who the top athletes are, especially the top quarterbacks, needs to be “changed.”
“I’ve been working on this for about two years now, but certainly this offseason … the whole discussion about top-five/top-10 quarterbacks is going to have to change,” he said.
He further stated that such a list does not take into account necessary parameters and therefore inevitably results in the exclusion of certain players.
Orlovsky also argued that the way the media talks about quarterbacks is unfair and overlooks some of the fundamental talent that goes into being a great play-caller.
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