Barstool Wvu First Day of Classes 2019 Funny Signs

When Pat McAfee realized Peyton Manning had approached the roulette table, he didn't know what to look. The Indianapolis Colts' then-rookie punter wasn't supposed to exist at that place. He had planned on being at home solitary that afternoon. Instead, he had merely spent the final few hours successfully rallying; Manning had invited him to play golf game with some teammates and, equally it usually does for golf game novices, it went comically wrong. But during a bus ride to the group's hotel in French Lick, Ind., McAfee won everyone over, telling jokes and tales of his exploits at W Virginia University.

At present, he was seated at a roulette table inside the hotel'south casino lobby with $100 worth of fries spread out across dissimilar numbers.

That'southward when Manning made a proposition.

How about that red 18?

And then Manning disappeared. But McAfee followed the didactics. He pulled all of his chips until they formed a stack on height of the ruby 18. Others at the table, perhaps confounded by his decision, all followed suit. Every chip on the table ended up on the aforementioned number.

The dealer spun the bicycle. Miraculously, the red 18 hit.

"Information technology'south the most magical matter I've ever seen," McAfee tells Sports Illustrated. "And I think (Manning) fifty-fifty knows. It wasn't supposed to happen."

The tale is just one of many throughout McAfee's life in which something that wasn't supposed to go correct ultimately did. On that twenty-four hour period, he pocketed $3,500. Believe it or not, information technology probably isn't the nearly impressive haul of his life.

Fifty-fifty earlier Pat McAfee was talking ears off on The Pat McAfee Show or commanding the attention of i.5 meg on Twitter, he was, in many ways, the same electrical Pat McAfee virtually are familiar with today. The Plum, Penn., native is one of two children—he has an older brother, Jason, his "polar contrary"—born to Sally and Tim McAfee. Pat was a cocky-described "loud," "terrible" child with a non-stop motor. Plausible qualities for artistic, determined individuals like himself, but reason why he insists he's "and then scared to procreate."

"I was all over the place," McAfee says. "I made my parents' life probably a nightmare. I was merely a very rambunctious, ready-to-go person. I always had huge dreams, huge aspirations and ever a lot of energy. From what I've been told, I could exist tough to handle as a child. But I've ever been a happy, kind of accept-a-skilful-fourth dimension, bring-the-juice blazon of person."

Ambition and unrestraint helped McAfee to instigate ane of the most important moments of his life.

McAfee grew up a soccer player. He didn't start playing football until his junior yr of high school, but in short time, he established himself every bit a very skillful placekicker. In fact, he nearly ended upwardly at Penn State, only the Nittany Lions ultimately signed someone else. His father helped him fortuitously land a scholarship at Kent State by his senior year, but when McAfee was invited to a national kicking competition in Miami, where nigh a hundred college coaches would be in attendance, he couldn't turn down the take a chance.

He needed $1,500 to get. But having already committed to Kent State, his parents didn't want to pay the massive cost.

So McAfee hatched a plan.

One night, he entered the basement of an Italian eatery in Pittsburgh with $100 he had borrowed from a friend. He competed in a poker tournament confronting grown men, aiming to win plenty money to pay for his trip to the showcase.

Scroll to Go along

SI Recommends

He succeeded, winning $ane,400. His father covered the other $100. McAfee flew down to the military camp, where he made a 65-yard field goal. He fifty-fifty had the leg on a 70-yarder that went broad right. He returned home, and the next twenty-four hours, a visitor came to encounter him at schoolhouse.

"Adjacent morning," McAfee recalls, "I get offered to Due west Virginia."

From 2005–08, McAfee made 58 field goals at West Virginia (tertiary-nigh in school history), making 73.4% of his attempts, in addition to treatment kickoff and punting duties. To this day, he's grateful, particularly of star teammates Pat White and Steve Slaton, who combined for 156 total touchdowns during McAfee'south Mountaineers career. It led to the Colts selecting him as a punter with the 222nd choice of the 2009 NFL draft.

McAfee wanted to be known as a good teammate. He knew that his part was most the bottom of the totem pole. Merely he worked hard at his craft, enough to where he was respected in the locker room for both his skill and his personality.

"If you're a punter or a kicker, you don't have a lot of moving-picture show written report to exercise," McAfee says. "There's not a lot of things to watch. You're just going to kick the ball. We had nowhere near the amount of preparation time that everybody else needs. And then I've got a lot of energy. (Teammates are) coming correct out of three-60 minutes meetings where they had to learn what the hell a Comprehend 2 defense was this week. I accept no idea what a Encompass 2 is, but I know that I haven't talked to everyone for three hours. So when they got out of that meeting, nosotros're getting ready for exercise, there needs to exist some juice, I felt like that my job in the locker room was to be the juice."

McAfee would bring information technology to the field, too, ascending to become ane of the NFL's top punters. His presence gave the Colts one of the meridian special teams units in the league with Adam Vinatieri, the most influential effigy of McAfee's career, as their placekicker.

"I am so lucky that I got drafted to a squad that had the greatest brawl-kicker in the history of kicking balls," McAfee says. "I mean, I learned so much from just watching him."

Pat McAfee (left) credits Adam Vinatieri (right) for being the most influential teammate of his NFL career.

(Photograph by Scott Cunningham/Getty Images)

In 2014, McAfee notched his beginning Pro Basin and beginning-team All-Pro honors. In 2016, he strutted his way to a second Pro Bowl nod, leading the league in yards per punt (49.3) and net average (42.7). Simply, despite simply being 29, McAfee shockingly and abruptly decided to retire at the end of his eighth year in the NFL.

"I kind of knew going into the twelvemonth that I was going to be done," McAfee says. "So I was just kind of waiting, and then a couple things happened and I simply wasn't happy going to work anymore. And it just got to the bespeak where I wasn't excited to get better at kicking balls. I wasn't excited to become and mayhap watch some more motion-picture show on Shane Lechler or Thomas Morstead and acquire more than. I just wasn't happy doing what I had been happy doing for seven years. I wasn't excited to get upwards and become to work anymore."

At the end of the season, McAfee underwent his third knee performance in 4 years.

"Honestly, I made a deal with myself. I watched my dad—he was a truck commuter, then he sold some wood and he'd exist upward at like 4:30 a.yard. and he'd bust his ass all day 'til six, and and so he would drive me to soccer practice, and then he'd be dead tired and become to sleep. But I know he loved it. I know he admittedly loved doing that because he provided for me and the family so much, only I knew he wasn't happy."

McAfee'south teammates were torn. Vinatieri, his closest friend on the team, was initially upset, only understood his decision would brand him happy again.

"I talked to a lot of people that I was tight with on the squad before I did it," McAfee says. "I told them I was gonna do it. Everybody thought I was full of due south---. Everybody thought I was. So when information technology happened, it was like, everybody was happy for me. Although I still go a lot of 'we miss you' text messages which is very, very absurd to see."

Perhaps the only affair more surprising than McAfee's decision to retire was that he was joining Barstool Sports equally a correspondent. But McAfee had already proven his value to such a business. He estimates he had between 500,000 and 600,000 Twitter followers at the time, and had fabricated decent money off a t-shirt company he promoted via social media. He had even washed stand up-up one-act, selling out a tour he did in Indiana which sold out x,000 tickets in almost an hr. His eponymous foundation was doing well. His weekly appearances on Bob & Tom, a local morning radio testify in Indianapolis, encouraged him to use his voice. He was ane of the NFL's outset punters to plant themselves as a recognizable make outside of football.

McAfee says he never had an agent until he hired a "pseudo agent" during his final NFL season. He asked them, hypothetically, if he were to retire that year, how many networks would allow him on their airwaves. "The agent got dorsum to me like two days after and said, 'Uh, there is zero interest, I've been told,'" McAfee recalls, chuckling. He nearly decided to launch an app with a local comedian, Todd McComas, who owned a standup comedy club.

"We had seen a lot of internet companies that do a lot of incredible things that made a lot of money," McAfee says. "Todd and I were going to endeavour and make i of those kind of small Indiana-based ones."

Pat McAfee (right) has become 1 of the nearly social media's most entertaining personalities.

(Photograph past Cindy Ord/Getty Images for SiriusXM)

But then the opportunity with Barstool came well-nigh. McAfee headed the weblog's "Heartland" segmentation and hosted his own show on SiriusXM. "I was kind of running my ain operation out hither in Indianapolis with an opportunity to just learn from them," McAfee says. "I was so and so lucky to do information technology."

However, the partnership didn't concluding. In August 2018, McAfee left, citing miscommunication from both sides, he says, primarily due to altitude betwixt himself in Indianapolis and the site's base in New York. He'southward thankful for the fourth dimension he had there, but says he reached a point where information technology was time to move on. There would be more than opportunity to come.

McAfee says he's had one constant in his life: WWE. He never knew what he wanted to be equally a child. He wanted to exist rich. He wanted to travel. At one point he wanted to exist an actor, a musician or a pro soccer actor. "Anything that makes you a lot of coin," he says. "But the merely constant was I want to be involved with the WWE. That's it. That was the but idea."

McAfee grew up watching entity icons The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H, and D-Generation X. He always wanted to be involved with WWE somehow. So when play-by-play commentator Michael Cole reached out to him, McAfee jumped at the chance. He made an advent at an NXT Live event as a guest ring announcer, then debuted during WrestleMania every bit a kickoff show panelist ahead of the NXT TakeOver: New Orleans event. He became a regular panelist on the NXT TakeOver kickoff prove.

In Dec, he announced he signed a multi-year contract with WWE. On Wednesday, he gave a behind-the-scenes glimpse of his first day at the new gig.

"Since I'm a fan, I have some knowledge behind the production a little fleck," McAfee says. "It seems to be a natural fit at this point."

McAfee'south broadcast career also includes coverage of college and pro football. In November 2018, he and former Packers linebacker AJ Hawk served as color commentators for a Large 12 matchup betwixt Texas Tech and Baylor on Flim-flam Sports one. Then, a month later, he worked as a color commentator for a NFC North matchup between the Detroit Lions and Greenish Bay Packers, when kicker Matt Prater threw a touchdown, on Fox.

Past getting into the berth, McAfee in one case once more found himself a spot where he probably shouldn't have ever been. He was rejected not once, but twice from the NFL's broadcast bootcamp, which overlooks the resumes of electric current and retired NFL players prior to deeming participants eligible.

"I think I can go on the tape and say this: I am the only player in the history of the NFL that has chosen an NFL game that was not a broadcast bootcamp graduate," McAfee says. "And with that being said, that also means I have no inkling what the hell to do.

"I went to cipher broadcast school. Other than watching the games at my house on a weekly basis, I had cypher clue what to exercise and I think that made it even better because I was merely wide open having a good time, both with the Texas Tech-Baylor game and the Light-green Bay Packers-Detroit Lions game in Lambeau in December. When the kicker throws the touchdown, it was only a really absurd thing and I never in my life expected that I would bask color commentating. I love it. It'southward one of my favorite things on earth to practise."

Pat McAfee retired following viii seasons in the NFL. He was named to 2 Pro Bowls and earned first-team All-Pro honors once.

(Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images)

With former ESPN Mon Nighttime Football color commentator Jason Witten returning to the NFL, McAfee has launched a Twitter campaign to fill in for adjacent year. Peradventure information technology's not then farfetched an idea—one oddsmaker gave him +500 odds to replace Witten.

"Nosotros'll see if I always get a risk to ever do it once more," McAfee says of calling football. "Probably not, I presume. But, if I do, it'south a blast, man."

Pat McAfee has the souvenir of gab. But even he finds it hard to put his life into perspective.

"Man, I accept no idea," he says, reflectively. "I'm not supposed to exist here. In that location's no way I'g supposed to be hither."

Just like how he wasn't supposed to be at the basement of that Italian restaurant some 13 years ago. Or how he wasn't supposed to be at West Virginia, or play in the NFL, forging friendships with legendary players. He wasn't supposed to retire early to become one of the internet's most entertaining and recognizable personalities, or call a higher football and NFL game, either. Certainly not bring together the WWE in any significant capacity.

But here he is having done all of those things. At 31 years old, McAfee has seen his fair share of disappointments, but they've never hindered him from having confidence in achieving success and having fun while doing so. His mindset is that every single solar day can go the greatest twenty-four hour period of your life.

"I'm very happy with what I exercise," McAfee says. "I bask the stupid decisions that my friends and I make. Everything for me is either a larn or a win. I just keep moving forward and that's most it, honestly. I think I'm the luckiest guy on earth."

jacobsthisfaces.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/03/07/pat-mcafee-nfl-career-wwe-broadcast-indianapolis-colts

Share this post