Bill Simmons Takes Subtle Shot at Pat McAfee Ratings

A simmering sports media feud between Pat McAfee and Bill Simmons was brought to a boil this week. After a few months of Simmons poking fun at McAfee by doing the occasional impression of the ESPN personality on his podcast, McAfee responded on Tuesday by pointing out that his FanDuel numbers were much greater than Simmons' before saying "Keep running your mouth, Bill." Such an escalation did not go unnoticed, by the general public nor by Simmons himself.

On Wednesday's edition of the Bill Simmons Podcast, the founder of The Ringer talked about the insane, record-setting viewership of this year's Super Bowl and observed that sports ratings seem to be up across the board except in the NBA and... whoever replaced the 12 p.m. SportsCenter. From the 1:00:14 mark of the pod:

"And then you see ESPN, at the end of the month, they're like, 'Highest ratings ratings ever for Get Up!' and all these different shows. Same for FOX. All their shows are up. Everybody's ratings are basically up except for the NBA and whoever replaced the 12pm SportsCenter. If your ratings don't go up, it's probably a bad sign."

A nice, subtle jab from Bill here. And there's a bit of an edge to it too given how McAfee's ratings has already caused trouble for both him and ESPN. It was a report about his poor viewership numbers that led to McAfee openly accusing executive Norby Williamson of leaking information. Nothing really ended up happening there but it did show that McAfee gets more than a bit sensitive about this sort of thing (which is why his co-worker, Chris "Mad Dog" Russo, criticized him in the wake of it all). So while Simmons did not say McAfee's name out loud, he is escalating the conflict.

Which is great news for everybody else! Two guys with huge platforms and daily shows getting mad at each other will provide immense entertainment. Even better that they seem to be mad at each other over basically nothing. Nobody made Simmons do a McAfee impression last fall and nobody made McAfee randomly bring it up on the Tuesday after the Super Bowl several months later. They're just taking shots at each other for the sake of taking shots.

The stakes can't get much lower which means the entertainment value can't get much higher. McAfee's show today will surely enjoy a marginal boost in viewership as the media nerds of the world tunes in to see if he respnds.