Popular Sports Host Reacts to Iowa Hawkeye Marching Band’s Tribute to Him

No national sports TV host loves Iowa and Iowa football quite like Pat McAfee and his co-hosts.

Even when they love to dunk on the Iowa Hawkeyes' perennially inept offense, the cast of The Pat McAfee Show shows love to the heartland of the Midwest on various occasions. It helps when Ty Schmit, one of McAfee's longtime producers, is a University of Iowa graduate and a devout Hawkeye fan. Even when he wants quarterback Cade McNamara benched yesterday.

Earlier this season, Pat McAfee took his show to Iowa City to bask in the glory of March Madness, as Caitlin Clark-mania began to take the country by storm. During halftime of last Saturday's CyHawk matchup, the Hawkeye Marching Band honored McAfee and his show in a huge way.

The Iowa Marching Band took it upon themselves to acknowledge the love Pat McAfee has bestowed upon the Hawkeyes and the state as a whole by lining up in various formations related to the popular host. That included his name "PAT/THANKS PAT," a cowboy hat, the WWE logo, and more. It was quite a sight, and a humbling one for McAfee as well:

WARNING: THE VIDEO BELOW CONTAINS PERVASIVE GRAPHIC LANGUAGE. VIEWER DESCRETION IS ADVISED.

I would like to give a shoutout to the Iowa band. That was so cool. I got, like, almost choked up because that was so incredibly nice of them. Obviously, they stop by the program when we went to Iowa, in the middle of a blizzard at the beginning of March Madness for the beginning of the women's team, Caitlin Clark's last voyage through March Madness [....] they were awesome. They were very cool during the Big Ten Championship [....] and then this past weekend, they did a tribute to our show. So cool. - Pat McAfee, per The Pat McAfee Show

McAfee and his crew gave the Hawkeye Marching Band a round of applause for their commitment and dedication, with McAfee recognizing the amount of time it took to put those formations together couldn't have been minimal by any stretch of the imagination.

But that's not all the above clip offers. Of course, the Iowa State Cyclones tragically defeated the Iowa Hawkeyes 20-19 thanks to the last-second boot of Dubuque Senior High School graduate/Iowa State field goal kicker Kyle Konrardy. This did not sit well with the aforementioned Ty Schmit, who launched into a hilarious, vulgar rant about Cade McNamara, the impossibility of Iowa winning the Big Ten thanks to the inclusion of far-west teams, and more.

The rant is absolutely hilarious, and accentuates the best of The Pat McAfee Show, in my opinion. It's a show featuring "guys being dudes," casually talking sports, ranting, and reacting much like fans without a fledgling media empire do. The chemistry between McAfee and his crew is top-notch.

And, I confess, it's awesome to see a national sports show devote ten minutes to the Iowa Hawkeyes at the start of the college football/NFL season.

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Kudos to the Iowa Hawkeye Marching Band on an electric halftime show, and kudos to Pat McAfee for devoting some televised real estate to the woeful-yet-lovable black and gold.