Former NFL punter turned YouTube personality Pat McAfee launched into a spirited rant during Tuesday’s episode of The Pat McAfee Show, shining a light on the hypocrisy of PGA backers taking the moral high ground as dozens of golfers (Open Champion Cameron Smith is rumored to be the next domino to fall) depart for Saudi-backed LIV Golf.
“I am not pro Saudi Arabia’s actions,” explained McAfee. “What I am saying is, I’m sick of the athletes being the only ones attacked for getting this money from a moral standpoint when all of these companies get celebrated.”
Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and other PGA defectors have been subject to harsh criticism, portrayed as traitors aiding and abetting a corrupt government with a sordid history of human rights abuses and senseless violence. It’s a valid argument, though McAfee isn’t sure why all that self-righteous venom is being directed at athletes when all of us are to blame, feeding the capitalist machine through our investments in Twitter, Nintendo, Facebook, Starbucks, Disney, Pfizer, Amazon, Uber, Nike and AT&T, all of whom have ties to Saudi Arabia.
“Listen, there are going to be problems with money literally from any dollar that you see,” said McAfee. “There’s a lot of bad money in the world because there were a lot of bad people in the world for a long time. We hope to change that. We hope to become a better society. But also, we have to realize for what it is, that the money you all are high-horsing on is in your everyday life, everywhere that you’re at.”
From that vantage point, the American consumer finds itself in an impossible position, navigating a treacherous path rife with landmines and moral compromises. If everything we touch is tainted, does that make all of us complicit, accessories to bad actors exploiting a broken system?
“If you’re going to take a stand against athletes who have worked their ass off, were in a tour that guaranteed no money, shouldn’t we go after the billionaires that are also doing the same thing?” asked McAfee, skewering critics of LIV in a longwinded monologue. “‘Well, Pat those are publicly traded companies.’ So the stock market’s the only place that’s allowed to collect money from a $675-billion fund for investments and athletes aren’t able to do it? Small business people aren’t able to do it? That’s a fascinating high horse to be riding your ass in on.”
In a ruthlessly competitive world economy where corruption is as commonplace as changing a lightbulb, where do we draw the line? Rory McIlroy has said he prefers not to “legitimize” Saudi Arabia, but it seems that train has already left the station.
“The PGA Tour is something we all grew up watching. I’m a big golf fan. This is going to make the PGA Tour better, I think,” said McAfee. “There was an opportunity that Saudi Arabia saw. There was a business that was operating as a monopoly that wasn’t paying their players or treating anyone correctly.”
Even if McAfee raises some interesting points, Mickelson and others shouldn’t be mistaken for heroes—they made a business decision, not caring about the backlash or consequences they would face from fans and sponsors. Unfortunately, this is the sad reality we face as sports fans amid a changing landscape where tradition will never hold a candle to the almighty dollar. A similar tectonic shift is underway in college football with the NCAA hurdling toward a new alignment of “mega-conferences” fueled by mammoth television rights deals. Maybe this evolution was inevitable, though that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.
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