Pat McAfee halfheartedly apologizes, then defends tweet about MSU football, Larry Nassar

On Monday, Pat McAfee, a former punter for the Indianapolis Colts and now one of the most popular sports commentators, took time on his show to address his recent controversial tweet that referenced jerseys the Michigan State football team has worn and disgraced former sports doctor Larry Nassar.

The original tweet in question was in reply to a photo of Michigan State's neon jerseys in which McAfee said "Nassar was in on the design team actually."

The interaction immediately started to draw backlash.

While he did issue an apology in a video posted Monday, it was said in a somewhat sarcastic tone as he also continued to defend his tweet and place the blame on how others perceived it.

"There is an all-out onslaught against me right now for simply linking a terrible thing from a school to the most terrible thing from the school to a friend in a reply tweet, talking (expletive) to a friend," McAfee said. "I do apologize if some people took that in a different way and then spun it in their own narrative to offend a bunch of other people and kind of did that whole thing."

ORIGINAL STORY: ESPN's Pat McAfee under fire for tweet referencing Michigan State football, Larry Nassar

McAfee then seemed to double down on his tweet, insinuating that the Michigan State fan base was trying to bury the story.

"Does it feel like some Michigan State alums are trying to silence the media, whenever they acknowledge Larry Nassar, one of the most horrible humans, ever, of all time, he was at Michigan State for 14 years," McAfee said. "So that's not really a part of the story. They kind of created and empowered, and yeah, so like, if that's going to get us canceled..."

He then continued by saying he didn't know why he should delete it and apologize.

"People were like 'you need to delete this and apologize,' and I'm like 'uh, why, I'm talking (expletive) to my friend about something that definitely happened at his school, and I said this guy's on a design team," McAfee said. "Which if he was, this guy has done the worst imaginable, so if he did design those terrible jerseys Michigan State had as well, that wouldn't even be mentioned in the Larry Nassar entire thing."

Later in the video, he went into how horrible of a person he believes Nassar is.

"I wanna let everyone know who's coming after me, we believe Larry Nassar, terrible human, worst human, disgusting human" McAfee said. "I would like to say this show covered that more than probably, more than anybody about how bad of a guy he is."

He appeared to defend his tweet by saying this is how he chooses to cover situations that place people like Nassar in positions of power.

"We need to tell people that there's disgusting, horrible people in powerful positions," McAfee said. "This isn't something where it's like 'I can't talk about this.' No, like, hey, in our history, very recent history, people were given a lot of power that were very terrible people in the sports world and the way we decide to cover it is by talking (expletive) to somebody who loves everything about Michigan State because it's his school."

"If I went to Michigan State and this whole thing happened, if they didn't say that to me we would be avoiding something that is very serious, very terrible and very real," McAfee continued. "So I do apologize to everybody that took my six-word tweet and then said I was disrespecting this, and not thinking about the victims like 'what???' I think we're thinking about the victims, future victims and everything by reminding people this (expletive) had a lot of power at Michigan State for a long time while being a terrible human being."

The reaction to the video was similar to the backlash he received from the original tweet, especially from those associated with the MSU community.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Pat McAfee apologizes, then defends tweet on MSU and Larry Nassar