{"id":884046,"date":"2026-10-16T06:38:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T06:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/884046\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T06:38:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T06:38:13","slug":"why-pat-mcafee-praised-byu-and-latter-day-saints-deseret-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/884046\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Pat McAfee praised BYU and Latter-day Saints \u2013 Deseret News"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Pat McAfee\u2019s eyes, football players from BYU tend to be cut from the same impressive cloth.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuper mature, already has a family, wildly athletic and handsome. That is seemingly a trait that (BYU players) have,\u201d McAfee said Thursday on his eponymous ESPN show.<\/p>\n

McAfee will head to Provo this weekend as one of the analysts for ESPN\u2019s \u201cCollege GameDay,\u201d which will broadcast live from BYU\u2019s campus Saturday morning ahead of the Cougars\u2019 high-stakes clash with No. 2 Notre Dame.<\/p>\n

Among the regular guests on McAfee\u2019s show are prominent BYU booster Ryan Smith<\/a>, along with former Cougars great Kyle Van Noy<\/a>. The sports media superstar has also welcomed Ryder Lyons onto his show to announce the latter\u2019s commitment to BYU<\/a>, and on Thursday McAfee shared that Steve Young will be the \u201cGameDay\u201d guest picker in Provo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of different Mormons that I\u2019ve encountered who I have a lot of respect for,\u201d McAfee said. \u201c… (There are) a lot of great football contributions coming from BYU and from the Mormon religion as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his playing career with the Indianapolis Colts, McAfee was teammates with former Cougars standout Austin Collie, who shared some background information about the faith as well as full-time missions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually learned about their entire religion during a spring conditioning session. Not all of it, because there\u2019s a lot of history there … Austin broke it down and answered every question I had, and I did a little bit of research to have enough questions,\u201d McAfee said. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut what I learned about him in the mission was so fascinating. He comes in (to BYU) as a freshman, breaks all their wide receiver records, and he gets called to go on a mission. I think he goes to Venezuela or Argentina, one of the (South) America countries. <\/p>\n

\u201cTwo years, no football, no weights, no nothing. You only write to your family once a week on Sunday, and you\u2019re just basically dropped into these countries … this is not an easy mission trip that they get called to go on. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in the same draft class, and he was like a 50-year-old man versus me; I was 21 years old getting drafted there. It was just interesting to learn about it, and they\u2019re all seemingly the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n

McAfee and the \u201cCollege GameDay\u201d crew will begin their broadcast at 7 a.m. MDT Saturday at BYU\u2019s Heritage Halls.<\/p>\n

\"\"University of Utah student Jonah Knubel, right, speaks with Pat McAfee before Pat McAfee\u2019s kicking contest during ESPN\u2019s \u201cCollege GameDay\u201d in the Presidents Circle at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2025. | Rio Giancarlo, Deseret News <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Pat McAfee\u2019s eyes, football players from BYU tend to be cut from the same impressive cloth. \u201cSuper…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":884047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,3125,99],"class_list":["post-884046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-news-feed-local","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}