Dave Portnoy weighs in on Pat McAfee, Utah saga

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Dave Portnoy has experience with college campuses hating him. Namely, according to Portnoy, Ohio State banned the Barstool College Football Show from its campus, and Portnoy blamed Ohio State head football coach Ryan Day for Fox Sports ending the partnership between Barstool and Big Noon Kickoff.

It is that lens, it appears, through which Portnoy observed Pat McAfee’s gripe with the University of Utah unfold in dramatic fashion this week.

Last Saturday, ESPN’s College GameDay set up shop in Salt Lake City ahead of Utah’s matchup with Houston later that night. McAfee picked Houston to win (they lost) and punctuated it by saying, “I’ll never see you guys again, hopefully.”

Before College GameDay arrived, this since-deleted video showing Utah students doing impressions of McAfee made the rounds. McAfee did not appreciate it.

On The Pat McAfee Show on Monday, McAfee took issue with the University of Utah’s official Instagram account posting the video and took his criticism in a wholly unexpected direction.

🚨 Pat McAfee GOES OFF on the University of Utah 😳

He says he’s never felt so uncomfortable, even bringing up what happened at UVU last year.

“I did not enjoy the University of Utah.”

HOLY SMOKES 💀 https://t.co/YCXQPM3vEH

“If these kids would have done this on their own blogs, all good,” McAfee said. “I mean, everybody’s taking shots at me anyways for everything. I get it. If the two ladies that were hosting that put that out on their own blog, I’d be okay with it. Hey, you, you’re allowed to do what you—the university puts that out? Like, as I’m about to go out and do an infomercial for the place? And then I’m walking in front of thousands of these people. This is how the university feels about it? It’s an uncomfortable feeling.”

McAfee added, “And then I thought to myself, has anything, like, really scary happened at like a college gathering in the state of Utah recently? Like, do we think we should be amplifying reasons for why people hate my guts as a university? I don’t know.”

McAfee was seemingly alluding to Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot at Utah Valley University in September 2025, which he has done before.

On Tuesday, Portnoy posted an old video showing him receiving a warm welcome at Utah’s Rice-Eccles Stadium, writing, “With all this McAfee controversy I just want to say I loved Utah. Granted this was before I became Provo Dave, but I loved it. Crowd was great. Fans were great. I’d go back in a heartbeat with Barstool Football Show.”

Later Tuesday, Portnoy also addressed the saga during a livestream after a commenter asked, “Is McAfee the softest hard-o to ever live?”

Dave Portnoy’s thoughts on Pat McAfee vs Utah:

From the source “Utah is awesome. Great environment. Great fans… so that was a little surprising..” @stoolpresidente https://t.co/15NBtRxF3C

“Listen, unique guy,” Portnoy said. “I just posted. I went to Utah. It was awesome. So, I don’t really know what—I saw the video. It didn’t seem that [bad]. If that’s really what got him mad, the video of a couple of college kids being like, he’s gonna say something corny like […] ‘Houston, we have a problem,’ listen, I’m hated at a lot of the campuses. I don’t mind it. It’s like heel WWE.”

Portnoy re-emphasized how “awesome” and “great” Utah is, in his opinion, before concluding that the McAfee storyline is “a little surprising.”

On Monday night, an ESPN spokesperson provided a statement to Chris Vannini of The Athletic, saying, “The safety and security of our on-air team, crew and fans is paramount at College GameDay. We are committed to ensuring a safe environment, and given the very real threats that members of our team face, we take issues involving their safety seriously. We support Pat and recognize the very real and valid concerns he has around safety and security.”

The University of Utah also released a lengthy statement disclosing that university officials reached out privately to McAfee to “express appreciation and regret.”

“We sincerely apologize for creating any perception that Pat was unsafe or unwelcome on our campus,” the statement reads, in part. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Pat and the entire GameDay crew are always welcome at the University of Utah and we deeply appreciate the opportunity ESPN provides to showcase our university and community.”

This particular drama appears to have reached its final act, but McAfee has a habit of amplifying criticism (or whatever he perceives as criticism), so what happened with Utah is more likely to be one in a series of College GameDay subplots rather than a one-off episode.