Pat McAfee Reveals What Happened When He Tried to Buy Jell-O Shots for WVU Fans

The moment West Virginia punched its ticket to the College World Series for the first time in program history, everyone knew that the bars in Omaha were about to make significantly more money with Mountaineer Nation coming to town.

When WVU legend Pat McAfee announced that he would be doing his show live from Omaha on Friday ahead of the Mountaineers' matchup with Troy, the expectations heightened for WVU's performance at the famous Rocco's Jell-O shot challenge, and for good reason. McAfee, of course, has plenty of money and likes to have a good time with his fellow Mountaineers.

However, things didn't go quite as he or his crew expected. He shared his experience at the beginning of his show on ESPN.

Pat's night at Rocco's

We went to Rocco’s last night 😂😂 #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/kgyNMJUi2m
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) June 12, 2026

“Incredible gimmick to kind of publicly force people who are the boosters for other schools to come compete for this at our place. So, guy puts out video from Rocco’s last week saying West Virginia’s coming and he @’s me in it. So, I was like, cool, I can’t wait to go participate in this. I love buying drinks for people. It’s one of my favorite things to do. Got loans out in college so that I could buy drinks for folks because I wanted everybody to have a good time.

“We were supposed to call ahead to this guy, who is the general manager. He was not happy that we did not call ahead. Did not know we were supposed to do that; we had never done this before. West Virginia’s never been here. So then I start asking questions. How does this work? I brought checks. I brought checks with me like it’s 1995. And I go, ‘Do I write checks?’ and the guy goes, ‘Yours will bounce, I think.’ Just kept walking. Wasn’t like a joking thing. This is the general manager of the place, the guy that was in the video. So I’m walking behind this guy, and he’s not happy we’re there, and I go, ‘Do I just write a check?’ And ‘Nope, yours will probably bounce’ and keeps walking or something. And I’m like, so, alright, actually, how’s this work? Like, I’m pretty exhausted, and I came here to do this to represent West Virginia before this thing gets started. He goes, ‘Card.’ I go, ‘Okay, well how’d that guy do $300,000? Is there a credit card out there that has a $300,000 limit? That’s incredible. I need to find that.’ And he goes, ‘He wrote a check.’ I’m like, ‘Can I write a check?’ He goes, ‘No, we’ll figure it out,’ and then puts us into an area.

“It was very much like a you’re lucky to be giving us this money to do this entire thing as opposed to like a celebration. And I think they were treating everybody like that.”

McAfee did end up buying some drinks for Mountaineer fans, but WVU head football coach Rich Rodriguez, who was with him at Rocco's, made sure not to go too crazy with his money, telling him the football team could use that money more.

“Selfishly, that’s a lot of money. I could be buying me a 3-technique or a backup linebacker or something. I mean, it’s important that we win the shot thing, but not nearly as important as getting a 3-technique or a damn linebacker. Write the check for NIL, West Virginia football. We'll forget about the Rocco's thing in a day, but a 3-technique, you got him for three or four years."

"Write the check for @WVUfootball" 😂😂@RealCoachRod #PMSLive https://t.co/jSYaVdtuG2 pic.twitter.com/F4tBvxAUFt
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) June 12, 2026

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