By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — Get ready Indianapolis, Pat McAfee’s coming to town.
He just may be the biggest thing to hit town since you stole the Colts away from Baltimore.
Chances are he’ll be sneaking in the back door, just like the Colts did and just like he did here in Morgantown when he came out of Pennsylvania as a soccer player who dabbled in kicking a football.
Who knew he was a plum from Plum?
Mostly Indianapolis is a quiet Midwestern city, known for the world’s most famous auto race, the Indianapolis 500, at a track known as the Brickyard, and as the place where Peyton Manning quarterbacks the Colts.
Model citizen, that Manning guy.
Hope he’s fun loving, because you can bet McAfee will have him laughing before he throws his first preseason touchdown pass this year.
See, there aren’t many around like McAfee.
He hasn’t gotten out of college yet and he’s already debuted as a professional wrestler.
He says that’s his goal, now that he’s tried it, although earlier in his career he had another goal.
“My lifetime goal is to have a late night talk show. Awesome. They get paid big. Leno has 300 cars and all he does is sit there and talk to people. Those guys, they don’t even write their own jokes,” he said.
Certainly he would write his own jokes, right?
“Write? I can barely read,” he joked.
At least he said it as if it were a joke.
Bet he reads today’s newspapers, at least the online editions, because they’re going to proclaim to the world — probably in small type everywhere but West Virginia and maybe Indianapolis — that the Colts drafted him in the seventh round.
Before he wins another wrestling match — he did win that debut match — before he hosts any late night talk show, he is going to get a chance to win the punting job with the Colts.
He probably can forget about placekicking. The Colts have a guy named Adam Vinatieri who does that. You might have heard of him.
Certainly McAfee has.
Vinatieri has only won two Super Bowls with last-minute field goals, hitting a 48-yarder as time expired in a 20-17 victory over St. Louis in Super Bowl XXXVI and hitting a 41-yard field goal with four seconds left in a 32-29 victory over Carolina in Super Bowl XXXVIII.
Vinatieri is a 14-year veteran who may be getting a little long in the toenail, so they may try to groom McAfee as his replacement, but it is as a punter that he has an opening.
Hunter Smith, who punted the last 10 years for the Colts, just signed a free agent with the Washington Redskins, leaving Mike Dragosavich as the only punter on the roster. He was claimed off waivers from New England in February.
And so it is that McAfee will be a person of interest and when he has the stage, you never quite know what might come out of his mouth.
Take the day he came back from a Canadian visit.
“Oh, my God, I landed in Chicago O’Hare Airport and we drove to the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. I called Owen (Schmitt, former WVU fullback) and asked him about it. I drove through nowhere for an hour and a half and the school just popped out of nowhere. I said, ‘Oh, my God, where am I? I need to get back on solid land.’”
They drove on to Canada.
“I (saw) a man on the street — a bum — begging for change. I gave him what they call a toonie, a $2 dollar thing in Canada. A $2 coin! Later that night — this is not a lie — I was at the roulette table and that same bum was playing with a $5 chip on the number 14. He lost, but where did he get that $5 chip? You tell me. You tell me where that happened. That’s the problem with the world today.”
McAfee’s kicking is, in a way, a lot like his story telling — unpredictable.
He hit a 51-yard field goal in Heinz Field, the longest ever kicked there, and a 52-yarder as time ran out against Cincinnati this year to force overtime, but he also missed to chip shots against Pitt two years ago and missed a 23-yarder against Colorado in overtime.
He has boomed some of the longest punts imaginable, averaged better than 44 yards last year, but he’s also managed to get off one of 6 yards, perhaps the shortest kick ever by a player who was drafted by the NFL.
One thing is certain. McAfee will make his presence felt.
“I think he has a fighter’s mentality,” Stewart said. “He’s tenacious. He’ll get after it. You’ve seen him tackle. He could have gotten a couple of 15-yard penalties the way he body slams people when they break a long one.“
You can write this down. Indianapolis is going to wind up loving him, just as we around here are going to miss him.
Having looked at the placekicking this spring, we may wind up missing him for a lot more than just his free spirited persona.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
