Pat McAfee’s Larry Nassar Tweet Slammed as Tasteless and Inappropriate

Pat McAfee is taking heat for his tweet about Larry Nassar. The ESPN personality and former NFL punter responded to a tweet that criticized Michigan State football’s neon uniforms. McAfee implied that Nassar “was in on the design team” for the uniforms. 

Once other people on Twitter saw what McAfee published, they went after him. “This is disgusting Pat. I would take the L and run this one back,” one person wrote. “This is offensive to so many that tried to right a wrong and to the women that were hurt. This is not funny.”

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Another Twitter user wrote: “Making a joke about someone who committed hundreds of sexual assaults isn’t something that should be done. This is gross.” Some fans defended McAfee, but they were few and far between as many felt like it was in poor taste to joke about Nassar who is in prison for sexual assault. 

“Man, I love you and the boys [The Pat McAfee Show], but this is in very poor taste and not at all funny,” a fan tweeted. “The abuse of so many young women is nothing to make light of.I know you probably don’t care what I think, but I’m really disappointed that you would even go so far as to defend it.”

On Monday, McAfee talked about his controversial tweet on his show. “Hey, listen, I don’t want to say it, because, you know, there is an all-out onslaught against me right now for simply linking one terrible thing from a school with the most terrible thing from a school to a friend in a reply tweet, talking s— to a friend,” he said, per Fox News. “And I do apologize if some people took that in a different way and spun it in their own narrative to other people and kind of did their own thing.

“I was simply talking s— to a friend. But does it feel like Michigan State alums are trying to silence the media whenever they acknowledge that Larry Nassar, one of the most horrible humans ever, of all time, he was at Michigan State 14 years? So, that’s not really a part of the story, that they kind of created and empowered [him]. If that’s going to get us canceled. … It’s going to get loud.”  

Nassar was the team doctor of the United States women’s national gymnastics team who used his position to assault children and young women. He was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison in 2017, but an additional 40 to 125 years was added to his sentence in 2018. 

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.