Before Pat McAfee was a media superstar, he was a Barstool Sports personality with a chip on his shoulder at Dave Portnoy’s outlet.

McAfee inked with Portnoy’s Barstool immediately after early retirement from the NFL in 2017, and roughly 18 months later, things had soured and McAfee departed after “feeling disrespected,” though Portnoy is calling this whole situation overblown by the now-ESPN star.

In an interview with Front Office Sports’ Ryan Glasspiegel, Portnoy called McAfee out nearly eight years later for allegedly taking liberties with the latter’s version of events.

“He thought the business side disrespected him, so he felt he had to leave — that was his version of events,” Portnoy said.

“I think he probably was always going to leave. He’s a super ambitious guy. Super talented guy. But that was the reason he publicly gave — that he couldn’t trust our business side anymore.”

Portnoy added that no one on the business side was at fault either, leaving the reader to question whether there’s more to the story than what McAfee publicly disclosed.

“Now, I don’t think our business side did anything wrong,” Portnoy said. “I think he kind of blew it out of proportion, but that is the reason he gave.”

The apparent problem was that McAfee was late getting paid on something and it spiraled.

“It had something to do with, he was late getting paid on something, like a commission check. In the inherent nature of how he was set up with us, we were almost partners, right? If he did a sales deal or we closed one for Pat, he would get 50% and Barstool would get 50% of it, I believe was the agreement,” Portnoy said.

“Whereas, if we sold something for ‘Pardon My Take (PMT),’ Barstool gets 100%. So he had a natural distrust that if our sales department was going to a client, they’d always want the client to go to ‘PMT.’ The structure created a little bit of distrust.”

At the time, McAfee was furious with the company for their business dealings and quickly went on his own with a YouTube channel.

“I began being disrespected by the business people in the building. I’ve decided I don’t want to make money for these folks anymore,” McAfee wrote on Twitter (now X) when he quit Barstool in 2018.

“I’m very proud of the work I did with Barstool.”

McAfee went independent for a while and has since hosted his show on ESPN and earns a handsome $17 million per year with the Worldwide Leader.

“Financial decisions were being made for me by people I had never met, deals were getting made and pulled without my knowledge. The transparency of everything became obsolete, and also very expensive. I do not place any blame or hold any grudge towards Erika [Nardini] and Dave [Portnoy] for this,” McAfee said at the time about his Barstool split. “They’ve been nothing but nice and fair to me. They paid me very well. This is below them. I began being disrespected by the business people in the building. I don’t want to make money for these folks anymore.”

Barstool Sports has created behemoths such as “Pardon My Take,” “Call Her Daddy” (since departed for Spotify) and Jenna Marbles.