The New York Post's Andrew Marchand reported that Pat McAfee "pays millions" to Aaron Rodgers for guesting on his show, and McAfee took offense to the report.
Though McAfee personally messaged Marchand and partially confirmed his report by saying that he's paid Rodgers "over $1 million for sure," McAfee still called sports media columnist a "rat" on "The Pat McAfee Show" last week after the news spread on social media.
Marchand took to his podcast, "The Marchand and Our and Sports Media Podcast," on Oct. 18 and delved a little deeper on the report he published on Thursday. He didn't directly respond to McAfee's comments, but said that McAfee —who Marchand also reported is paying University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban — isn't the only one in the media who is paying people for interviews.
"This isn't necessarily unusual in terms of paying for interviews," Marchand said, before listing several sports personalities who have been paid for media appearances such as two-time Super Bowl winning quarterback Eli Manning.
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He then said that the decision to pay Rodgers has been positive for McAfee's business.
"From McAfee's point of view, this is good business. It's smart business. The story I wrote did not argue against that," Marchand said.
The prominent sports media columnist implied that it's fair for McAfee to pay guests because there's one clear distinction between McAfee and other media members like himself.
"Pat McAfee is not a journalist. I don't think anybody thinks he's a journalist," Marchand said.
He continued by saying that McAfee has broken major sports news in the past, but there's still a difference between more traditional sports writers like Marchand, who don't pay their guests appearances or information, versus host like McAfee.
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Marchand said that an example will be for his story about McAfee where he reached out to McAfee via direct message and to ESPN as well to contact him.
"That's definitely the difference between what he might be doing in an interview or paying somebody for an interview or interviews and then people are contributors to his show. And when we do a story, they're not contributors to our story, we're covering something. So I think there's a difference," Marchand said.
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