Disney's Bob Iger needed a win. Pat McAfee just gave him one.

• Disney Bob Iger has gotten out of a jam with two of his biggest stars: Jimmy Kimmel and Pat McAfee.
• ABC's Kimmel and ESPN's McAfee have been embroiled in a controversy. Both networks are Disney-owned.
• Iger has been in big need of a win. This counts as one.

There aren't a lot of media moguls who could get out of a jam involving two of their biggest stars and pedophilia accusations. But that's just what happened for Disney CEO Bob Iger.

And it couldn't have happened at a more important time.

The longish backstory: For the last week, Iger has been watching two of his most important, best-paid stars — ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel and ESPN host Pat McAfee — embroiled in a controversy involving the two of them, star NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers and Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein is the disgraced financier who died in 2019 after pleading guilty to child prostitution charges and facing subsequent accusations of sex trafficking minors.

The details are both fascinating and tedious, but the tl;dr is that Kimmel has been (justifiably) upset that Rodgers, a long-running and crucial guest on McAfee's show, suggested Kimmel and Epstein had ties in an interview earlier this month.

Since then, Rodgers and Kimmel (who denies any association with Epstein; Rodgers has subsequently said he was just joking about the whole thing anyway) have been beefing with each other on social media and, more recently, on Disney-aired programming,

And as of Tuesday — when Rodgers appeared on McAfee's show again and continued to tweak Kimmel — the story looked like it would keep going.

Now, it appears it is not.

On Wednesday, McAfee announced that Rodgers was done appearing on his show for the remainder of the NFL season — meaning, presumably, at least through the Super Bowl on February 11 and likely for some time after that. It's unclear when McAfee intends to bring Rodgers back or if he ever will; ESPN reps declined to comment.

The Rodgers-Kimmel feud is over for now, at least on ESPN

It's technically possible that the feud between Rodgers and Kimmel will continue. Rodgers could appear on someone else's show — or just hop on Twitter/X or whatever — and strafe Kimmel. Kimmel could fight back on his show — or maybe on Threads.

There will also be fascinating details to learn about how, exactly, McAfee decided that he wouldn't have his most famous guest on his show anymore.

One of the reasons is that while Disney and ESPN are paying McAfee a reported $85 million over five years to bring his daily talk show to ESPN, McAfee isn't a Disney employee. That money is a license fee, which McAfee uses to produce his show and pay his own staff. (McAfee does have a separate deal to appear on other ESPN programming, a person familiar with the company confirmed.)

So while McAfee may technically have the right to do whatever he wants on his show — something he was vociferous about when he announced his deal to join ESPN last year — the practical reality is that both sides have leverage and something to lose: Disney and ESPN thought McAfee, a former punter who created his own popular YouTube show, was important enough to its future to give him a boatload of money.

And McAfee, who was already making a boatload of money on his own, thought there was value to being on the world's biggest sports network.

So both sides had incentives to make this go away. But now, assuming it has, it's a huge win for Iger, who has a very full plate of other problems he has to deal with since returning last year to the company he ran for years.

Bob Iger needs a win. Making this story go away will count as one.

The big picture is that the entire TV and movie business — which Disney once dominated — is under stress, and Disney has a variety of specific problems, including: an uncertain future for its once-dominant Marvel franchise, a rethinking of the costs and strategy around its streaming future; an ailing stock; and boardroom fights with former Disney executives and activist investors.

And ESPN itself — once the key to Disney's success and Wall Street's adoration of the company — is also now a big question mark as traditional TV audiences erode and sports programming costs continue to rise. ESPN continues to mint money for Disney, but its business is in decline, which is one of the reasons Iger has been publicly trying to woo strategic investors to pick up a piece of it.

All of which means Iger does not need any additional complications in his life. And certainly not one about one of ESPN's biggest stars, who is supposed to represent its path to the future.

Now, for at least the near future, it looks like that one got solved.