Pat McAfee returning to College GameDay

In a move that was both widely expected but still long-awaited, Pat McAfee announced Wednesday he will return for his third season as a College GameDay panelist.

McAfee brought his return into question last October when a reader poll published by The Athletic found 48.9 percent of respondents had a negative view of McAfee on the show, compared to 30.1 percent positive. 

McAfee released a statement thereafter implying he may not return to the show after the season.

To be fair, McAfee has been an odd fit on college football's pregame show of record. He was clearly getting himself up to speed with college football when he joined the show mid-season in 2022, his weekday talk show spends far more time talking NFL than the college game, and last season he picked a fight with Washington State fans -- GameDay's most loyal fan base -- when they publicly complained about ESPN's role in the destruction of the Pac-12.

However, McAfee has quickly become one of the most important figures within ESPN and was publicly supported -- by Kirk Herbstreit in particular, whose son Jake interned for McAfee last summer -- after the Athletic poll was released, and it was clear that McAfee's return to Saturday mornings was up to him.

Still, he remained unsigned into last month, until announcing his return in a video on Wednesday.

"I thought long and hard: am I the right person to be doing this incredible gig?" McAfee said. "There are millions and millions of people that would love to be sitting in my seat. Am I the right guy for it? Is this what I want to do?

"And the only thing I kept coming back to was, hell f*cking yeah."

Television personalties are placed in front of the camera to provoke feelings and reactions. Many (most? all?) aspire to reach a level of "universally beloved," a rare group occupied by legends like Walter Cronkite, Johnny Carson and, to pick the one present-day figure all sides of the audience can agree upon, Scott Van Pelt. McAfee clearly desires to be adored like those in that group.

But very few reach that status, and short of that, "universally polarizing" plays nearly as well as "universally beloved." McAfee will never be universally beloved, but he's already got the polarizing thing down.

As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.