Pat McAfee’s popular kicking contest on ESPN’s College GameDay had its first winner of the 2026 college football season under its new payout format Saturday.
Connor Kecena-Merrell, a freshman at Texas, made his second attempt at a 33-yard field goal in Austin on Saturday morning for $1.2 million, after missing his first attempt for $1 million. Before the kick Kecena-Merrell, an Indiana native, said that if he made it he wanted to donate half the money to Indianapolis-based nonprofit Building Tomorrow.
New this year is some financial assistance for McAfee, who exclusively funded the more than $6 million of prize and charity money during the contest’s first three seasons. Home Depot, a longtime sponsor of GameDay, is now officially part of the kicking contest too, and is matching the amount of money McAfee offers up each week. “Usually companies don’t do blank checks,” McAfee said when announcing the update last weekend. “Home Depot said, ‘We will match anything you say.’”
On Saturday, after the first missed kick, McAfee said that fellow GameDay co-host Kirk Herbstreit and Texas superfan Matthew McConaughey (who was in attendance) were adding $100,000 each to raise the second attempt to $1.2 million. Last week’s participant in Baton Rouge missed two attempts.
Despite becoming one of the most heralded parts of GameDay, the fate of McAfee’s kicking contest was seemingly up in the air at the end of last season. “Final kick of the season,” McAfee said in December. “Final kick, maybe, of the field goal kicking contest.” GameDay host Rece Davis told Front Office Sports in June that he hoped the contest would return. “We love it,” Davis said. “It’s just tremendous.”
McAfee and ESPN are in early contract extension talks—his current deal doesn’t expire until 2028—that could pay him more than $60 million per year. McAfee added Monday Night Countdown duties to his long list of ESPN roles this season, becoming a co-host for the weekly traveling Monday Night Football pre-game show.
