{"id":296578,"date":"2026-09-30T02:16:52","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T02:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/296578\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T02:16:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T02:16:52","slug":"allentown-pennsylvania-graduate-wins-1-million-kicking-challenge-on-college-gameday-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/296578\/","title":{"rendered":"Allentown, Pennsylvania graduate wins $1 million kicking challenge on College GameDay"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A barefoot kick has given a college freshman from the Lehigh Valley a lot to celebrate!<\/p>\n<p>WPVI<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"6abc Digital Staff Image\" class=\"hsDdd NDJZt sJeUN IJwXl \" data-testid=\"prism-image\" draggable=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790734612_545_16248352_2024-wpvi-generic-6abc-logo-on-white-background-img-v3.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Monday, September 21, 2026<\/p>\n<p>Follow 6abc on Google<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">ALLENTOWN, Pa. (WPVI) &#8212; A barefoot kick has given a college freshman from the Lehigh Valley a lot to celebrate!<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">James Whitehead kicked a field goal worth $1 million on live television.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The graduate from Parkland High School in Allentown won the chance to participate in Pat McAfee&#8217;s &#8220;Kicking is Easy&#8221; challenge on  College GameDay on ESPN Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Whitehead is a finance major at the University of Mississippi.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">He never played football, but he was a forward on the Parkland soccer team in high school.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">He said he called a friend, who was a kicker, for some pointers before attempting the field goal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Whitehead says he plans to invest some of his winnings and use some to support brain cancer research, to honor his grandfather who died from the disease.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">He called the entire experience &#8220;awesome.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2026 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A barefoot kick has given a college freshman from the Lehigh Valley a lot to celebrate! WPVI Monday,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[120634,119,121,120],"class_list":["post-296578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-120634","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}