Connor Kacena-Merrell walked away with $1.2 million on College GameDay after a second chance at Pat McAfee’s Kicking is Easy field goal contest turned a missed kick into a life-changing make. The University of Texas student from Zionsville, Indiana, pushed his first try wide right, then drilled the next one straight down the middle and won the full prize on the spot.
That is why his name landed in searches today. McAfee had picked Kacena-Merrell for the contest this week, putting him in front of a live audience and giving him the kind of one-shot moment that can vanish in a second. He did not play football in high school, and his path to the tee was built instead through volleyball at Park Tudor High School and youth soccer.
The money did not come from a simple do-over. After the first miss, Matthew McConnaghey and Kirk Herbstreit each promised to add $100,000 to the pot, which lifted the total enough to make the second attempt worth $1.2 million. With Matthew McConnaghey on hand to help, Kacena-Merrell settled in and sent the kick through the middle.
He said he would donate half his winnings to Building Tomorrow, the Indianapolis-based non-profit organization that works with communities in East Africa to give children access to quality education. The promise adds a public turn to an already improbable scene: a student who missed once, got one more swing at it, and turned a football contest into a seven-figure payday.
College GameDay has made the Kicking is Easy contest part of its pregame show, but this one stood out because the prize grew in real time and the winner responded with a pledge to give half away. What comes next is not the kick itself, but whether Kacena-Merrell follows through on that promise and how quickly a fortune won in minutes can be turned into something lasting.
