Jemele Hill Gives Merit to Pat McAfee’s Claims of ‘Sabotage’ from ESPN Exec: ‘We Experienced A Lot of What Pat McAfee Was Talking About’

Jemele Hill knew exactly what Pat McAfee was talking about when he claimed an ESPN executive tried to “sabotage” his show by leaking information.

Last week, McAfee accused Executive VP Norby Williamson of being a “rat” and leaking things to the media. He made the accusation live on last Friday’s episode of The Pat McAfee Show. ESPN released a statement saying the issue between the two would be handled internally, but McAfee doubled down on his show on Monday.

Speaking on The Dan Le Batard Show, Hill said the move by McAfee was unprecedented.

“I think I was pretty amused by it, as well,” Hill said, “because — as you mentioned, Dan — this is just something that you just never see, and especially at a place like ESPN where there’s sort of an unofficial cardinal rule about talent-on-talent crime or letting what is happening in the building spill out into public arenas in the way in which Pat McAfee did.

I mean, I’ve never seen that in the history of this network that somebody just took a flamethrower to one of the executives there, who has been there forever. Everybody knows who Norby is.”

As Hill watched the situation unfold, she added that it reminded her of what she went through before ultimately leaving ESPN.

“What happened to [Michael Smith] and I on the 6 o’clock SportsCenter — one day, I hope — will be a case study for media classes everywhere, and certainly toward the end of our time there,” she said. “We experienced a lot of what Pat McAfee was talking about, so that is the part that I could certainly relate to.”

Before joining ESPN in September, McAfee’s show was already immensely popular on YouTube. Because of this, Hill argued, he’s uniquely positioned to take on ESPN.

“Nobody else can do this,” Hill said to Le Batard. “You’re completely right, but that doesn’t matter… When you’re in the building and you’re working for them, they try to sell you on the idea that everybody is treated the same; and we know everybody is not treated the same.

“This is gonna give somebody down the road a lot of leverage in terms of how they have dealt with some of the conflicts that have arisen there. Everybody, we know, is not treated the same; and how you’re treated depends on how much leverage you have. And Pat McAfee has an awful lot of leverage, which is why he called his shot. That’s why he did it to begin with, because he already knew what the outcome would be.”