Pat McAfee To Shane Lyons: “Retire Pat White’s #5”

Pat McAfee, who was one of the color commentators on Thursday’s night game against the Baylor Bears, dropped an anecdotal segment in which he recalled talking to the West Virginia Mountaineers athletic director Shane Lyons and Pat told him “You need to retire Pat White’s jersey”. McAfee then goes on to detail all of the reasons that it needs to happen.

“Pat White literally brought West Virginia to relevance. Literally. Won four straight bowl games, ain’t nobody to do that. Five if you count the Senior Bowl. He was THE cheat code on the NCAA game. We were selling out stadiums, everywhere. We were on Thursday night prime time television, before the NFL. We had a placard, in our lockerrom that said ‘ESPN’s Most Watched Game’ or something like that. On one of our Thursday night games, Pat White probably ran for like 700 yards or something like that. He just became a part of pop culture for a lot of people. He just happened to be playing at the exact same time as Tim Tebow, who was in the SEC, who did nothing but everything right. The SEC obviously gets a much bigger push than the Big East at the time, even though all we did was SLAUGHTER S-E-C at the time. I wish we would have had the chance to play Florida Gators one time, so you could see Pat vs Tim. Just because they are two very different players. Very, very different players, but two incredible leaders. We all would have went to war for Pat White, it almost happened on numerous occasions. That is something that almost happened in clubs both in Morgantown and out of Morgantown. That is something that we would do. That is a dude you would want to be friends with. For me, that was the big thing. I was very lucky to get to hang out with him a lot. I was very lucky to get to watch, and he didn’t get paid out. ... I just think, he’s a guy who should get a lot more credit than he gets.

If Pat were coming out today, he would be the first pick in the draft. They would be tanking for Pat. He was Tua, but faster, taller. I don’t know if he could throw the ball better, but he could throw the ball. He was able to run though. If he could kill you with his legs, he didn’t have to just pick you apart with his arm and he could kill everyone with the legs. “

#Retire5