The folks in Morgantown were expecting some big things on Friday when alum Pat McAfee brought his show to town for a live broadcast the day before West Virginia hosts Penn State.
They expected big crowds. They expected big guests. But they might not have expected such a big financial windfall.
Friday was a heckuva day in Morgantown where The Pat McAfee Show kicked off with the first, but not last, rendition of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and shots of a very raucous crowd happy to see their punter-turned-sports media star. The show was incredibly WVU-focused, as you might imagine, featuring appearances by Mountaineers legend Pat White, head coach Neal Brown, and West Virginia native Nick Saban.
The financial fortunes of one West Virginia student turned when former WVU basketball star Deuce McBride drained a long-distance shot that meant McAfee would pay for their tuition.
McAfee later pointed at two students who showed up at 3 a.m. to enjoy the show and announced he was giving them $10,000 apiece.
Late in the show, McAfee announced that he was donating $1 million to the West Virginia NIL collective, noting that “it will not be from my name. It’ll be for the entire team that I played alongside.”
We wanna say thank you to West Virginia..
I will be donating $1M to the West Virginia NIL Collective from the entire team I played alongside..
I was VERY lucky to be on that team and this is from ALL of us #WVUPMSLive pic.twitter.com/nsqPwbVuip
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) August 30, 2024
McAfee played for West Virginia between 2005 and 2008.
All told, it’s been a pretty big weekend for West Virginia football and they haven’t even played Penn State yet. If they can find a way to knock off the No. 8 Nittany Lions, it might go down as the kind of weekend that changes the entire trajectory of the program. Or, as Pat might say, progrum.
