Patrick Mahomes ‘ mother, Randi, is not pleased with the way ESPN’s Monday Night Football broadcast team referred to her son, Yahoo Sports reported.
During the September 28 matchup, which saw Mahomes lead his Kansas City Chiefs to a 34-20 victory over the Baltimore Ravens, Randi apparently noticed that one or more of the announcers had been calling her son “Pat” and she was having none of it.
“If this announcer doesn’t stop calling my son Pat.. ugh i may scream… lol #help,” she tweeted, tagging both the @ESPN and @ESPNNFL accounts.
She didn’t name names, so Yahoo Sports writer Jason Owens “went to the tape,” as the saying goes, and found at least one offending incident. Specifically, it was during the second quarter, when Mahomes threw a 49-yard touchdown bomb to Mecole Hardman, after which analyst Louis Riddick uttered the word “Pat.”
Riddick later owned up to his mistake, when word of the tweet reached the ESPN booth.
“Guilty, guilty, guilty. I apologize, Patrick,” he said while chuckling.
So why is Mahomes’ mother upset over a seemingly-minor mistake? The issue appears to be the fact that there are two men named Patrick Mahomes, one a father and the other a son. The father, a former Major League Baseball player, goes by “Pat,” while the son goes by his full name.
So should Riddick be forgiven for a minor flub? Or did he make a major faux pas for which his bosses at ESPN need to have a conversation with him?
Former ESPN analyst Booger McFarland noted that a football announcer, particularly in a high-profile setting like MNF, should expect to be scrutinized for just about everything he (or she) says while the microphones are hot, in a May Yahoo Sports report.
“You’re always going to be scrutinized. A lot of people talk about wanting to be the man in the arena. When you are the man in the arena or when you a part of a group and your broadcast team is in the arena, you’ve got to be able to deal with everything,” he said.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr , Randi Mahomes has been by her son’s side for the entirety of his career as an athlete, even going back to when he was a young boy.
“I knew when it came to sports he was going to be able to reach whatever level he wanted,” she said of her son.