KFAN’s Paul Allen apologizes for on-air comments about ‘paid protesters’

Vikings announcer Paul Allen is sitting on the bench.

The longtime Vikings announcer told listeners of “The Paul Allen Show” on KFAN radio Monday, Jan. 26, that he is taking a few days off after comments he made on-air last week triggered a flurry of criticism. He also apologized several times for the words he used during his Jan. 23 program.

“I made comments on Friday about protesters and the weather that was insensitive and poorly timed, and I’m sorry,” Allen said Monday.

During that Friday broadcast, Allen wondered aloud if what he called “paid protesters” get hazard pay in the cold. Later in the broadcast, he said: “Everyone’s catching strays this week ... they’re just all over, paid protesters caught one this morning.”

The comments got national attention after they were shared by Awful Announcing, a sports media website, and the shooting death of Alex Pretti the next day.

After Pretti’s death on Jan. 24, Allen posted on X, where he has over 225,000 followers: “I have to stop watching all this for a little bit. I’m so sad this terror is happening all around us here in MN. I just prayed to God’s will for it to somehow stop and now and started crying. I truly am sorry for all hurting like me through this, and I just want us to be a Love Covenant again. Truly. Let’s all pray this stops somehow because it’s awful.”

He added that there would be “no more cheap one-liners from me.”

“If the Vikings don’t fire you I’ll either find another team or just quit watching football,” wrote someone under the handle @phoenixpreacher. “Your cheap Christian cliches and right wing rhetoric have ruined one of the great joys of my life.”

Some showed support for Allen or asked people for understanding. Former KQRS host Tom Barnard, no stranger to controversial takes, shared his thoughts Jan. 26 on X.

“Thinking about Paul Allen on my walk this morning,“ wrote the host of ”The Tom Barnard Podcast." “I am not telling you what to think, I just want to say I know Paul. I like him. Can we come together and understand, if you are on the TV, radio podcast, whatever for hours a day, it’s hard to not make mistakes. I did! Let it go.”

Allen dealt more directly with the aftermath on Jan. 26 with a prerecorded statement in which he said his “best was lacking” last week.

“I absolutely and wholeheartedly apologize to those who genuinely were hurt or offended by them [his comments],” he said. “Nine to noon doesn’t formulate political opinions, we don’t bash or praise political discussion or even focus on political issues.”

Attempts to reach the Vikings and KFAN management were unsuccessful. A spokesman for Canterbury Park, where Allen has called races since 1995, said he had no statement at this time but that Allen will remain the track announcer.

Allen has built a national reputation for his boisterous approach to calling football games.

“A lot of the catchphrases that I use, I pulled from horse racing,” he said in a 2022 interview for the Star Tribune’s “Daily Delivery” podcast. “There are no play-by-play guys in the NFL, maybe ever, who are also racetrack announcers. A horse race builds a crescendo. Well, every play in a National Football League game builds a crescendo. It’s the same, it’s just a play is shorter than a race.”

He also addressed his love-’em-or-hate-’em reputation.

“I’ve done this so long that I’m going to get people who rip me up, call me a homer or Barney the purple dinosaur,” he said. “Whatever they want to say, they can say because I know I’m not as bad, ever, as what they say. But on the other side it’s a majority that’s overly rhapsodizing what I do on a microphone calling games. Well, I’m not that good, either.”