It’s been over a decade since Pat McAfee found himself at the center of one of the wildest NFL offseason stories. The year was 2010, and McAfee, then a 23-year-old Indianapolis Colts punter, was living the carefree life of a young pro athlete. Nights out? Check. Buying rounds of tequila for the entire bar? Check. But that October evening turned into a cold, hard reality check by morning-a public intoxication arrest that sparked rumors and a whole lot of jokes about him taking a dip in an Indianapolis canal.
Now, in classic McAfee fashion, the ESPN analyst is finally clearing the air. In a clip posted on Yervakin Clips this January, he addressed the infamous incident head-on. “I wasn’t charged with swimming in the canal. It was public intoxication. So, the story of me being in the canal is all hearsay and propaganda,” he said, laughing off years of speculation.
The short version? A woman called 911 after spotting a shirtless, soaking-wet McAfee near her car at around 4 a.m. The police arrived to find him drunk, cooperative, and cold. With a blood alcohol content of 0.15, McAfee was taken into custody-not as a punishment but for his own safety.
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The long version? Well, that’s where things get murky. McAfee still doesn’t fully remember why he was wet or where his shirt went. “The officer kept asking, ‘Why are you wet?’ and I just kept saying, ‘I’m not sure, sir.’ Five times, same question, same answer,” he recounted. His best guess? “I like to sweat a lot when I dance, so maybe I was dancing.”
From rock bottom to redemption: How Pat McAfee turned a scandal into a life lesson
By morning, the situation was far less funny. McAfee’s dad hung up on him when he called from detention. Reporters swarmed him as soon as he stepped outside, and the Colts weren’t exactly thrilled. The team handed him a one-game suspension and a $10,000 fine. Oh, and his phone? Broken during the drunken debacle, leaving McAfee to apologize to his mom through Facebook.
“It was one of those moments where you just want to crawl into a hole and disappear,” McAfee later admitted.
But here’s the thing about Pat McAfee: he doesn’t run from his mistakes. Two weeks after the incident, he publicly apologized, saying, “Obviously, I made a dumb decision on a night when things got out of control. I will never put my team or my family through this kind of embarrassment again.”
Looking back, McAfee sees the arrest as a pivotal moment in his life. “If it wasn’t for that evening, I certainly wouldn’t be in the NFL right now. I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with how I was living and still perform at a good level,” he admitted.
What could’ve been a career-derailing scandal instead became a wake-up call. McAfee turned things around, becoming one of the league’s best punters, earning two Pro Bowl nods, and even playing in a Super Bowl. Now, as one of sports media’s most charismatic personalities, he uses the incident as a punchline in his own life story.
