“All Coming Together For One Thing” – Pat McAfee Delivers Yet Another Message Of Unity On ESPN’s ‘College GameDay’

Pat McAfee reminding the masses that, even in what seems like the darkest of times, we’re all still lucky to live in the United States of America.

No need to remind you (the reader) that this was a tough and heavy week for America. The tragic and senseless act of violence that took the life of Charlie Kirk has left all of us saddened, and wondering how we move forward as a country.

It’s been nice to see that ESPN’s Pat McAfee has attempted to make the horrible situation an opportunity for unity. The day after Kirk was assassinated while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University, the sports personality offered up a message of hope.

As a whole, ESPN hasn’t provided much commentary on the passing of Charlie Kirk. But when it got around to The Pat McAfee Show’s time slot, the sports personality and show host dedicated over four minutes to simply addressing Charlie Kirk’s death and the current state of the country:

“I don’t want to say that everyone has to get along and everyone has to agree, but at least we can move forward without hating each other, which is seemingly what social media has done to us in a way that I don’t know if anyone could predicted when we thought that the entire world should be connected in the palm of our hands.

It feels like there are lot of people that get a lot of satisfaction from being ‘the most’ something. The ‘most this,’ the ‘most that.’ Whenever people try to compete on who is the meanest to the other side of aisle, I think you are inevitably going to run into some chaos happening in our world.

I’m not a politics person. I’ve been thrown into the political world a couple of times by my own mistakes, but also because of my own opinions. It’s a blender over there. And to be a person that wants to go in and stand on your beliefs, and try to change the world, and have the courage to do so. And also welcome and embrace debate in that world, with how much anger there is, I think is a pretty admirable trait to have.

So although I did not know Charlie Kirk – I certainly saw his clips from afar – I thought he was a crazy person for welcoming and embracing the interactions that he wanted on the topics that he believed so mightily in. But I also believe that he believed that what he was doing was making the world better. I think the people that are willing to hear the other side and maybe extend a hand or maybe change their own opinion are the people that we should be modeling ourselves after.”

Well said by Mr. McAfee.

I honestly wasn’t expecting him to provide any further commentary on the matter, but during ESPN’s flagship college football program College GameDay, Pat recognized another opportunity to bring people together.

McAfee and the rest of the show’s analysts (Kirk Herbstreit, Rece Davis, Desmond Howard and Nick Saban) were in Knoxville, Tennessee ahead of Tennessee’s ranked matchup against the University of Georgia.

Sports being a great uniter in its own right allowed for Pat to rally the troops, so to speak, and encourage those to realize how fortunate we all are to live in America:

“It’s a great day to live in the greatest country on Earth: the United States of America. All week, we’ve seen and heard maybe a lot more than we should about what separated us and makes us different and our differing opinions.

But on this beautiful campus on this glorious Saturday, you’ll see 102,000 plus in the 8th largest stadium in the world from different economic backgrounds, political backgrounds, religious backgrounds, you name it… all coming together for one thing.”

Chills.

And Pat is exactly right. Sports have the power to bring us all together, and it feels like we need that now more than ever. McAfee went on to add:

“A football locker room is the greatest place on Earth. A stadium is as well, and today, we celebrate what makes this country great. And today, and today we celebrate the greatest sport on Earth.

I think that’s what we need to remember on weeks like this. It’s great to be alive, it’s great to be a football fan, and Saturday always delivers.”