Pat McAfee
"Train of diarrhea and disappointment," Pat McAfee debut album gets dragged by sportswriter 1
Over the last couple of years, no personality in sports media has had a more meteoric rise than ESPN’s Pat McAfee. A former punter for the Indianapolis Colts, McAfee made a little over $15 million in his eight-year NFL career. His current deal with ESPN, a five-year contract, pays him $30 million a year annually.
What is more, he is currently in negotiations with the Worldwide Leader in Sports on an extension that would pay him at the very least $60 million a year.
Obviously, McAfee has created a great following for his weekly podcast, which is streamed on ESPN itself and YouTube. With his follower count growing exponentially, he decided to try a new form of entertainment: music.
Sportswriter blasts the Pat McAfee debut album
Pat McAfeePat McAfee
Aug 03, 2026; Latrobe, PA, USA; Pat McAfee records a segment of The Pat McAfee Show at Pittsburgh Steelers Training camp at Saint Vincent College. Mandatory Credit: Barry Reeger-Imagn Images
McAfee’s debut album, entitled “Diary of a Polarizing Figure,” dropped on August 14. While it generated a great deal of praise from the former punter’s co-workers at ESPN, many fans have taken to social media to criticize it.
SB Nation’s Jarrett Bailey wrote an entire review after listening to the whole album, and had very few good things to say about it. His article, with the title “A trainwreck of diarrhea and disappointment,” summed up McAfee’s foray into the music world with the following critique:
“Pat doesn’t have a great voice, and the exaggerated accent is very cringey. Lyrically, this was a repetitive vanity project. And I’m not even trying to knock Pat for liking attention – everyone likes attention. We all have hubris. That’s perfectly okay to admit. But it also wouldn’t have made the album sound any better.”
He did, however, make a bit of a wild claim that calls into question the validity of his criticism:
“That said, it’s still better than any Beatles song I’ve ever heard, and I’m 100 percent not joking when I say that. The Beatles suck.”
The questionable Beatles statement aside, it was clear that Bailey did not care for McAfee’s album. As of this writing, the number of downloads McAfee has generated for his debut music project are not public. However, based on his sports media popularity alone, one may assume it is in the hundreds of thousands, at the very least.
It is also pretty clear, based on McAfee’s personality, that he does not care what people think of his music. He did not make it to get more fans. He made it because he wanted to.
That being said, it will be interesting to see if there is a second album at any point in the future.
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