Joyful Take.

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Inside Pat McAfee's GameDay Kicking Contest and Its Rules

A raffle ticket, a 33-yard kick and one attempt. The official rules are short, the on-air prizes are not, and the coaches' crossbar throws are a different game entirely.

3 min read September 26, 2026 edition
Flat editorial illustration of a single football standing on a kicking tee on bright grass, with a row of blank raffle tickets fanned out beside it and one ticket lifted by the breeze, plus a small blue dot on the tee.
One ticket, one tee, one kick. Illustration: Joyful Take.

In October 2023 a University of Washington student named Greyson Wilhelm stood in the College GameDay crowd holding a sign that said "kicking is easy." Pat McAfee, a former NFL punter, took that personally. He offered Wilhelm $60,000 to make a 33-yard field goal on live television. Wilhelm hooked it wide. The crowd chanted for one more, McAfee cut the prize to $30,000, and the second kick went through. HuffPost reported that Wilhelm had camped out overnight for his spot. I wanted to know how a heckler's sign turned into a weekly fixture with million-dollar prizes, and the answer starts in some very plain fine print.

You're kicking at a .500 clip. You'd be fired from every single team. Kicking isn't easy, but you're $30,000 richer.

Pat McAfee to Greyson Wilhelm (source)

What the official rules actually say

ESPN published official rules for the contest in 2023. They are shorter than most phone contracts. One fan in what ESPN calls the Pit, the crowd area at the show, gets the chance to attempt a 33-yard field goal. Fans get in first come, first served, and pick up a raffle ticket before the show starts.

  • A ticket number is drawn at random at or around 8:30 a.m. Eastern, with up to two alternates in case the first pick is ineligible or declines.
  • Entrants must be US legal residents aged 18 or older who are present in the Pit.
  • Current and former collegiate athletes are not eligible.
  • The kicker gets one attempt, with no practice or warm-up kicks, using ESPN's ball and holder.
  • Athletic shoes or rubber cleats only. Boots, sandals, heels and metal spikes are out.
  • A good kick must meet the criteria of a field goal under professional football rules, as ESPN judges it.
  • The printed prize in 2023 was $25,000.

One caution. The 2023 document is the public version, and I did not find a newer rules file, so treat these specifics as the original framework rather than a confirmed copy of this season's terms.

The printed prize and the real one

That $25,000 figure has aged like milk in a warm car. Front Office Sports counted four student makes in 2024 for a combined $650,000 to the kickers. Sports Illustrated put the 2024 total at $1.7 million once donations to charities were included, and its running tally for 2025 finished at $3.7 million. The biggest single make of 2025 went to Vanderbilt's Tyler Hwang, who kicked barefoot and won $500,000 for himself plus $250,000 for charity, according to Front Office Sports.

The one-attempt rule bends on camera too. Wilhelm's second chance in 2023 was the first sign that the printed rules are a floor and the show is happy to improvise above it. SI's 2025 log includes several more second-chance kicks.

Who pays? ESPN's answer, given by production executive Matthew Garrett to The Athletic before the 2025 season and quoted by SI, was that it is "truly all Pat's money." Awful Announcing confirmed on September 3, 2026 that the contest is back for a fourth season, and noted that the announcement did not say how this year's prizes will be funded. We could not find that answered anywhere either.

Where the coaches' crossbar throws fit

The coach challenges are a separate, improvised side game with no published rules document. On September 12, 2026, Oregon's Dan Lanning hit the crossbar from the 15-yard line on his third and final throw for a $500,000 McAfee pledge to the Sam Day Foundation, then added $50,000 himself, per Sports Illustrated. Two weeks later, on September 26, Tennessee's Josh Heupel needed one throw to earn $100,000 for charity, Saturday Down South reported.

My favorite detail in all of this sits in rule three. Heupel played quarterback at Oklahoma, which makes him a former collegiate athlete, which means that under the rules ESPN published he could never have entered the student kick. He had to be invited to a different contest to show what he could do.

McAfee's stated premise, as Front Office Sports put it, was to show that a kick the length of an NFL extra point is not as easy as it looks on television. Four seasons in, the contest has proved that point roughly as often as it has disproved it. Wilhelm's sign was wrong, and it still paid him $30,000. Most arguments end worse than that.

Sources

Every factual claim above traces to one of these. Links open in a new tab.

  1. ESPN College GameDay Pat McAfee's Kicking Contest Official RulesESPN, 2023.
  2. Student Who Holds Up 'Kicking Is Easy' Sign Gets Chance For $60,000 Field GoalHuffPost, 2023-10-16.
  3. College Students Have Won $2.7M in Pat McAfee Kicking ContestFront Office Sports, 2025.
  4. How Much Money Pat McAfee Has Given Away in 2025 'College GameDay' Kicking ContestSports Illustrated, 2025-12-20.
  5. Pat McAfee's kicking contest confirmed to return for fourth season on 'College GameDay'Awful Announcing, 2026-09-03.
  6. Dan Lanning's Perfect Throw Prompts Pat McAfee's Massive DonationSports Illustrated (Ducks Digest), 2026-09-12.
  7. Josh Heupel hits crossbar throw from 25 yards for 6-figure charity donation on College GameDaySaturday Down South, 2026-09-26.