The Meteoric Rise Of Pat McAfee

Pat McAfee is an American success story, in more ways than one. As a soccer-playing youngster, he developed a skill at kicking a ball, which he parlayed into a career in the NFL. As a place-kicker and punter for the Indianapolis Colts, McAfee had a fairly short stint in the league, playing with the Colts from 2009 until retiring in 2017. "I'm a blue collar American who enjoys life and who just happens to be good at punting footballs," he once told ESPN.

Football, however, was only the first act. After his retirement, McAfee launched a massively successful podcast that has made him far more money than football ever did. Meanwhile, he's had a long association with WWE. In late 2024, he revealed he'd be returning as an announcer for "WWE Raw" on Netflix, under the pro wrestling league's deal with the streaming giant. He's also earned a reputation for controversy, such as when McAfee landed in hot water for NSFW comments on Caitlin Clark. 

So how did this talented professional athlete transition from NFL kicker to a media mogul and podcasting superstar? It's been a wild ride, so buckle up and prepare to experience the meteoric rise of Pat McAfee.

The legend of Pat McAfee began when he was a high school senior and invited to participate in a kicking contest organized by college football coaches from all over the U.S. There was, however, one key problem: McAfee was broke and had no way to get himself from his home in Pittsburgh to the competition in Miami.

McAfee learned of a poker game being held in the basement of an Italian restaurant, featuring high stakes and big antes. With $100 he borrowed from a friend, he entered the game determined to win enough to get to Miami. "Dumb thought. Blindly optimistic. Pretty narcissistic as well, now that I think about it," McAfee recalled during a 2024 appearance on the "All the Smoke" podcast. Yet it worked, and McAfee turned his borrowed $100 into $1,400 in winnings, enough to afford a plane ticket to Florida. 

It was in Miami that McAfee demonstrated the steely determination and ability to excel under pressure that would later become his hallmark in the NFL. Kick after kick, over increasing distances, McAfee nailed nine consecutive field goals. The next afternoon, McAfee was offered a scholarship to West Virginia University, setting him on that path that ultimately led to the NFL. 

During his years at West Virginia University, from 2005 to 2008, Pat McAfee distinguished himself as a placekicker and punter for the school's football team, the Mountaineers. McAfee's college record was impressive, making 58 of the 79 field goals he attempted.

McAfee's journey in professional football began with the 2009 NFL draft. He was picked up by the Indianapolis Colts, drafted in the seventh round, 222nd out of 256 picks. "It's a perfect situation for me, and I'm learning a lot," McAfee said in an interview with the Colts' website, shortly after joining the team. During his rookie year, the Colts made it to the Super Bowl, where McAfee and his teammates were defeated by the New Orleans Saints (then helmed by quarterback Drew Brees, before he embarked on an exciting new career path).

Just as he'd done with the Mountaineers, McAfee made his mark on the Indiana Colts. That was clear when, in 2016, he entered the Guinness Book of World Records by kicking a perfect 40-year field goal while blindfolded. That wasn't the only record that McAfee set with the Colts, having punted more yards than any other kicker in the team's history.

Pat McAfee had only been on the Indianapolis Colts for a year when he became embroiled in the biggest scandal of his career. After a night of heavy imbibing in October 2010, McAfee was arrested on charges of public intoxication, after a woman called 911 to report that the shirtless NFL player was trying to enter her car. According to the police report (via NESN), McAfee was three sheets to the wind when he'd decided to swim in Indianapolis' Central Canal. When asked how much he'd had to drink, McAfee did not disappoint in his response. "A lot," he said, "because I'm drunk."

After spending the night in jail, McAfee called his father — who immediately hung up on him. The Colts responded by fining and suspending him. "At that moment, I just wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear," McAfee recalled in a 2016 interview with IndyStar.

McAfee came to look back on that night as a turning point, a wake up call he didn't realize he needed. Without the humiliation he experienced, McAfee believed he would likely cratered his career. "If it wasn't for that evening, I certainly wouldn't be in the NFL right now," he said. "I wouldn't have been able to keep up with how I was living and still perform at a good level."

Pat McAfee's arrest may have been an embarrassing debacle, but it sent him careening into a whole new direction. In 2014, he decided to dip his toe in the world of standup comedy. Making his onstage debut, McAfee hilariously recounted what had taken place. "I get out of jail finally ... I go to [Colts GM] Bill Polian's office — hilarious conversation," McAfee told the laughing crowd, recalling "that it ended with me getting fined 40 [bleeping] thousand dollars." 

Having demonstrated a talent at standup, McAfee continued to pursue comedy, performing a four-date tour in Indiana. As McAfee told ESPN, he found comedy to be far less stressful than his day job. "I'll have 1,300 people letting me know I suck," he said of bombing onstage. "But if I mess up my kicking job, I have 60,000 people letting me know immediately that I did not do well. Punting the football is much more pressure ... I don't think the pressure of stand-up comedy is near what it is in football." He also admitted that, as a comedian, he was still a work in progress. "I'm not there yet because I need more practice in comedy," he said in another interview with ESPN.

Indianapolis Colts fans likely didn't realize that Pat McAfee's foray into comedy was his way of testing the waters for a new career that would rely on his mouth, not his ability to kick a football. In February 2017, McAfee announced he was retiring from the NFL and joining Barstool Sports, the podcasting empire founded by entrepreneur and social media personality Dave Portnoy. "I'm gonna do a little radio, a little TV and just create content in general, and hopefully make the world a happier place," McAfee explained during an appearance on "The Dan Patrick Show."

For McAfee, the writing had been on the wall after a series of injuries had left him questioning his future as a professional athlete. "Well, staring down my third knee surgery in four years, with more surgeries certain for the future ..." McAfee added, detailing that kicking had impacted his knees to the point of near-debilitation. "The last half of this season I couldn't really walk much on days that I kick," he noted. "I'd just go home and lay in bed and ice my knees. I felt like a 90-year-old man."

Months after Pat McAfee signed on with Barstool Sports, IndyStar reported he was setting up shop at a 10,000-square-foot building in downtown Indianapolis, with "Barstool Heartland" to become the center of an Indiana-based podcasting facility. "Our goal is to attract the best talent not just in Indianapolis, but from across the country to come and work with us," McAfee said in a press release. "We needed to create a space that encouraged the highest level of creativity."

McAfee's tenure with Barstool Sports proved to be short-lived. In August 2018, he issued a tweet revealing he'd decided to part ways with Barstool Sports, and explained why. "Financial decisions were being made for me by people I had never met, deals were getting made and pulled without my knowledge," McAfee wrote. However, he insisted he had no gripes about impressively wealthy Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy nor the company's CEO, Erika Nardini, but pointed to some unnamed people in the financial side of the company whom he'd felt treated him less than respectfully. "I've decided I don't want to make money for these folks anymore," he declared.

As McAfee explained, he was now on the lookout for his next opportunity, and wasn't exactly sure what that would look like. "I'm officially a free agent," he wrote.

Following his departure from Barstool Sports, Pat McAfee launched his own podcast, "The Pat McAfee Show." He also made a move that wasn't entirely unexpected when he entered the world of pro wrestling. As his fans already knew, shortly before announcing his retirement in 2017, McAfee discussed his intention of joining the WWE when he told IndyStar, "My dream was always to become a professional wrestler."

He took one step closer to that goal in 2018, when he signed on to become a guest announcer for WWE's NXT Live event, which led him to an altercation with wrestler Adam Cole. In February 2019, McAfee entered into a deal with WWE. "I signed with the WWE, multiyear deal, on a microphone, doing digital things," McAfee told IndyStar, declaring his lifelong love of wrestling. 

While being a part of the league was an honor in itself, McAfee also admitted that his ultimate goal was to one day wind up in the ring. Until that happened, he was happy to be part of it all. "We're going to enjoy the hell out of this ride with the WWE," he declared.

Shortly after launching a new career with WWE, Pat McAfee marked another milestone when he came to Fox Sports in December 2018 to debut as an NFL analyst. As McAfee said during an episode of his podcast (as reported by Pride of Detroit), he planned on bringing a different energy to the broadcast booth than football fans may be accustomed to. "I have a different attitude towards it," McAfee described his role of providing color commentary. "I think it should be a show — I think they've started to make it too serious."

As it happened, McAfee was the ideal person to remark on the highlight of an otherwise lackluster game between the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers — then led by occasionally shady quarterback Aaron Rodgers — when a Lions kicker faked a field goal and instead threw a pass that resulted in a touchdown. "That was magical," McAfee said of the play, as reported by IndyStar.

That exposure did not lead to a job offer from Fox Sports, but it did open the door to a gig with ESPN as an analyst on the network's "College GameDay" football coverage. "I'm not sure there are any people that have ever commentated games like me," McAfee told the New York Post. "Hopefully, I'm blazing a new trail for former players, who have a little bit of personality."

While announcing WWE matches and calling college football games, Pat McAfee launched his next media venture, "The Pat McAfee Show." According to the New York Post, the radio show — featuring McAfee and some pals — was part of a deal with DAZN and Westwood One, initially syndicated in 40 U.S. markets. "My boys and I are just one-stop shopping, trying to take over the world," McAfee told the Post. 

As McAfee told The Hollywood Reporter, he'd hankered to get into television but wound up in radio. "I had a guy who was a pseudo agent for me who reached out to the networks to see if anybody had any interest in me," he said, pointing to his successful foray into standup a massive social media following. "And that pseudo agent texts me back within like 10 minutes that there is zero interest from any of the TV networks."

That rejection, he told THR, fueled his competitive nature enough to enlist an actual agent. "It put another chip on my shoulder," he said, jokingly admitting he still held grudges against those who'd turned him down and promised to retribution. "It's my job to make them look very dumb in five to 10 years," he quipped.

In December 2021, Pat McAfee made good on his threat to shame anyone who'd passed on his services as a broadcaster when he entered a wildly lucrative four-year deal with sports-betting site FanDuel.

McAfee made the announcement in a video he posted on YouTube, revealing the deal with Fan Duel was the culmination of everything he'd attempted since retiring from the NFL and discovering the television networks had no interest in his services as a football analyst. "We've been going solo now as our own independent operation for about three years," McAfee said, referencing the success that he'd achieved since exiting Barstool Sports and going it on his own. He then declared, "We just got paid an absurd amount of money ..." 

According to reports at the time, the total he was being paid was $120 million, $30 million per year over four years. "We're doing this show for the time to come, doing it hopefully in a bigger way, we'll be doing it our own way ..." he added.

While Pat McAfee's outspoken opinions are outrageous antics often make headlines, another aspect of his life is equally deserving of attention: his philanthropy. That has taken many forms over the years; when he took his standup comedy on the road for an Indiana-wide tour in 2015, proceeds went to his own charity, the Pat McAfee Foundation. That nonprofit, operated by McAfee and his father, Tim, provides scholarships for the children of personnel serving in various branches of the U.S. military.

When McAfee signed his mammoth deal with FanDuel, sports reporter Joe Pompliano tweeted that the former NFL star had immediately donated $6 million of that money to various charities, including shelters for victims of domestic violence, programs serving young people, and children's hospitals.

Alongside many wild stories of celebrity generosity, McAfee's philanthropic efforts have continued. These have included his "College GameDay" field goal-kicking competition for fans, which raised more than $1 million for hurricane relief, in addition to making a $1 million donation to the Country Roads Trust, contributing $250,000 to help support Indiana veterans, and a $50,000 donation to the charity of Mark Andrews' choice after the Baltimore Ravens player scored his fifth touchdown in five consecutive games. 

In 2020, Pat McAfee married Samatha Lundy. "Yesterday was a great day," McAfee posted of his nuptials. "My lady & I said 'Yup' to forever together in front of a great group of humans." 

Two years later, the McAfees revealed they were starting a family, announcing the news in a joint Instagram post. As they wrote, their journey to parenthood had not been an easy one, following two miscarriages that resulted in Lundy losing both Fallopian tubes. Now unable to conceive a child the usual way, the couple began IVF treatments. "Pumping my body with so many hormones, the anxiety, the hope, truly being a human science project," she wrote, revealing she was finally pregnant — albeit "after about 150 shots, a surgery, a transfer, countless blood tests, waiting on embryos, genetic testing ..."

That arduous journey came to a happy conclusion in May 2023, when the couple took to Instagram to announce that they were now officially parents. "Baby and Momma are both healthy," McAfee wrote in the caption, announcing the arrival of their daughter. "Momma and I are floating with joy. This is amazing. Thanks for all of the good vibes."

Less than two years after signing on with FanDuel, Pat McAfee had another announcement to make: he was jumping ship to bring "The Pat McAfee Show" to ESPN. In a May 2023 press release, ESPN revealed that he was parting ways with FanDuel as part of a new overall deal between McAfee and ESPN. That deal would not only see him continue as an analyst for "College GameDay," but bring "The Pat McAfee Show" to ESPN, airing live each weekday.

"Pat is a proven talent," said ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro in a statement. "He and his team have built 'The Pat McAfee Show' into one of the most engaging programs in sports and all of media ... We're honored to bring Pat and the show to ESPN through a multifaceted, multiplatform approach."

While McAfee was walking away from a guaranteed $30M per year, the New York Post reported that he and his team were being paid $85 million over five years (approximately $17M per year). McAfee would neither confirm nor deny that amount. "Interesting number," he told the Post via DM. He did, however, explain why he jumped to ESPN. "I will be paying my people and we will be producing the show fully," McAfee said over DM, expressing his excitement at now having access to ESPN talent for his show.