Last year, Pat McAfee had hinted that his field-goal contest on College GameDay might not return, but ESPN executive Mike Foss doubts he ever intended to scrap it.

In a conversation with Front Office Sports reporter Michael McCarthy on October 14, Foss said McAfee had made the future of the contest sound uncertain to stir up attention. The best evidence for it, according to Foss, is McAfee’s relentless donations.

“I don’t know if he was ever undecided,” Foss said about McAfee’s Kicking Contest. “Especially given how much he’s donated this year, you know. I don’t think you give away $12 million, just on a whim.”

McCarthy then asked Foss if all of that $12 million was Pat McAfee’s own money. Not to anyone’s surprise, ESPN’s Executive VP said: “Yes, 100%.” Moreover, according to Foss, McAfee is a “generational” talent, and the broadcaster values him immensely.

McAfee has paid for the contest himself since launching it in 2023. Home Depot came on board this season and now matches what he puts up each week. Foss’s reference to $12 million was about McAfee’s own charitable giving.

Still, by now, the competition has already sent more than $5 million to students and charities, and McAfee hasn’t backed away from donating to charities independently.

When former Hawkeye Dallas Clark took a turn throwing during the kicking contest, McAfee gave $150,000 to the children’s hospital and another $150,000 to a student in Iowa City in Week 5.

Some viewers questioned why the hospital had not received the usual $1 million prize. McAfee responded on his own show two days later, announcing that he would give the hospital the full $1 million.

“It didn’t feel right after I was kind of thinking about it,” McAfee said. “We’ll donate $1 million to that children’s hospital.”

A hurricane forced College GameDay to move its kicking contest indoors for the Georgia-Alabama game in Tuscaloosa during Week 6. The contest took place at Coleman Coliseum, where the student missed both attempts at the $1 million prize.

McAfee still pledged $500,000 to help communities in the area recover from the storm. In July, just before the 2026 season, McAfee took part in the CJ2K Ice Bucket Challenge.

He announced a combined $250,000 donation to support ALS research and raise awareness of the disease. McAfee goes out of his way to donate money and never fails to entertain; Mike Foss sees both an entertainer and a journalist in him.

“He might be a journalist at heart,” Foss said. “I think what you find is that as he puts the show together each day and something piques his interest, he’s got the Rolodex.

“So he’s able to navigate waters that I think he has built access I should say that a lot of people don’t have the ability to do.”

Foss joined ESPN in 2017 and became executive vice president and executive editor of sports news and entertainment in May, taking over from Dave Roberts. His comments about McAfee go beyond defending the host.

Foss sees the attention McAfee brings, and the money he puts into the contest and charity, as reasons for ESPN to keep him around.

McAfee became a full-time analyst on College GameDay in 2022. A year later, ESPN began carrying The Pat McAfee Show under a licensing deal, while McAfee kept ownership of its intellectual property.

Since then, he has taken on a bigger role in ESPN’s football coverage, appearing regularly across its programming. ESPN also has good reason to stick with McAfee in College GameDay.

The show averaged 2.8 million viewers through the midpoint of the 2026 season, putting it on track for its best audience yet. Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard, and Nick Saban still do much of the heavy lifting, but McAfee has given the show a different feel.

He brings more noise and spontaneity to the set, often making the broadcast itself part of the entertainment. Still, not everyone enjoys McAfee’s style. His loud delivery and unscripted moments can clash with the more restrained tone viewers expect from a football analysis show.

Foss has little interest in defending him to those who dislike the act. When asked what he would tell McAfee’s critics on GameDay, Foss kept his response short: “Absolutely nothing.”