ESPN’s Herbstreit to Pay Off Bet with McAfee in NIL Fundraiser

Pat McAfee set the terms for Kirk Herbstreit to pay off his West Virginia-related bet from last year

ESPN personality Pat McAfee has determined the punishment for his co-worker, Kirk Herbstreit, and it will benefit Name, Image and Likeness funding at McAfee’s alma mater, West Virginia.

Or at least he thinks he has.

McAfee announced recently during his ESPN show that his goal is to host a fund-raiser in Morgantown, WV, with Herbstreit, which would in part benefit the Mountaineers’ NIL fundraising projects.

He’s still working out the details, as Heartland College Sports noted in a recent piece.

“I’m going to announce this now even though it has not been scheduled, and we have no idea if it’s possible,” he said. “Kirk Herbstreit and I will be doing a live show at a theatre in Morgantown where the ticket money that is raised will be donated 50/50 to the NIL and to the children’s hospital down there across the parking lot from the stadium.”

McAfee noted that he hasn’t even run the idea by Herbstreit yet, but seemed to think it was irrelevant because Herbstreit lost the bet.

So what was the bet? Herbstreit bet McAfee that the Mountaineer football team would not win more than 6.5 games in 2023, a bet McAfee took. The Mountaineers had a bounce-back season under coach Neal Brown, as they won nine games.

McAfee joined ESPN Gameday two years ago and brought his Pat McAfee daily talk show to the network last year. His personality has injected both the Gameday show and ESPN’s daily lineup with some juice and additional ratings in an era where it’s getting harder and harder to get people to watch.