ESPN personality Pat McAfee lashed out at the assembled media at the end of ESPN’s annual media day, including criticizing Andrew Marchand and The Athletic’s Awful Announcing for allegedly misrepresenting him and The Pat McAfee Show.

The former Indianapolis Colts punter also couldn’t settle for a question from CNBC’s Alex Sherman, who asked if he’d had any conversations with his colleagues about “journalistic standards” since joining ESPN.

While on a panel with Scott Van Pelt, Stephen A. Smith, Elle Duncan and Mike Greenberg, the moderate discussion began to spiral out of control after 55 minutes when Sherman asked a question about standards.

After initially challenging Sherman on his definition of standards, McAfee said, “Sports media has never been wrong? Were there doctors on set during the entire COVID period on ESPN? How did that all play out? So when you’re talking about these journalistic standards, that was in journalism school… I think we’re bringing news on our show every day that wouldn’t be anywhere else. Is that journalism, getting people to open up and chat and talk and stretch out who they are, is that journalism, interviewing people who’ve never talked about anything? Is that journalism?”

McAfee has been criticized for giving Aaron Rodgers an unchecked platform to talk about his controversial COVID-19 views and other comments that have caused headaches for Disney. Brett Favre also sued McAfee for defamation over comments he made about the former quarterback’s ties to a Mississippi welfare fund scandal. Favre dropped the lawsuit after McAfee clarified his comments on the air.

After his CNBC response, McAfee was barely warming up. Ten minutes in, Marchand asked him what he thought might be the biggest misconceptions people have about him. McAfee went straight after the former New York Post reporter he has called a “rat” in the past.

“Because you made a lot of my life hell with the things that you reported, how you reported, what you said, and your source was purposely left out of the conversation at the time because of everything that you were going to do,” he said, apparently referring to former ESPN executive Norby Williamson, who also called McAfee a “rat” on his show. “So I think there’s just been a perception of me that’s been painted by a lot of different mischaracterizations and misrepresentations of what our show is… And sometimes we may be the worst people on TV, and we’re going to try not to be that going forward.

“But I think more than anything, and there’s a lot of people who may have never seen my show, but they’ve only seen the clips that have been taken out of context and put out, and then it’s back-to-back, back-to-back, and then all of a sudden, that’s who I am… and they’re never going to watch the show again. And it’s like, I want more people to watch the show. I want more people to watch sports. I want more people to be engaged in what we do at ESPN.

“And it just felt like there was some kind of calculated attack on me and my show because of how different we are, because of the journalistic standards that we don’t adhere to. We don’t have people from journalism school on staff. I didn’t do anything with an agent. I negotiated the deal myself. So those are two powerful groups that have potentially been completely cut out of my operation… A lot of legitimate people that I had a lot of respect for before this whole thing started just made me look like a complete asshole.”

He then criticized Awful Announcing for what he believed was a misrepresentation and misuse of footage from his program.

“You can definitely paint me and my boys as horrible people. And I think that happened to a lot of people because they got a lot of clicks,” McAfee said. “I mean, Awful Announcing is somewhere in there. I don’t know about you, but man, future revenue from, like, slander, libel, character assassination, stolen clips, all that shit. If I ever wanted to deal with suits, which I don’t, and everyone knows that could be a thing, I can make all that.”

McAfee made similar comments about Awful Announcing on his show Monday.

The former NFL punter ended the day with a plea for understanding.

“But I also wanted to come here and just say to you, I understand that you had a lot of reasons to potentially hate me … (that) are misplaced. I would appreciate it if you would give me, my guys, a chance,” he said. “I think we help sports media as a whole going forward. I think we’re going to do some things wrong, and we certainly apologize for that. But when you take our shit and try to kill us, that’s just, I think it’s journalistic standards. I think it’s definitely problematic. So that’s where I’m at. That’s how I feel. And the reason I wanted to come here is to hopefully share that message that we want to be good for sports in sports media. We want to build sports and we appreciate it if you just give us a fair chance.”

ESPN declined to comment on the matter.

At one point Duncan tried to defend McAfee by saying that there are different standards for shows like his and news reporters. Her defense seemed to be that he wasn’t a real journalist and that you shouldn’t expect him to be.

“One of the habits I learned at J-School is that you’re not allowed to have an opinion at all, and that’s the antithesis of what most sports media is doing right now,” she said. “So, and there are people who do a really good job of balancing it, but I just think it’s unfair sometimes that we expect him to behave exactly the way we would expect an Edward R. Murrow Award winner to behave, like … we have all kinds of types here, and that’s the great thing about ESPN.”

McAfee visibly shook his head when he heard Duncan speak.