"Hello... It's Pat."
— Indianapolis Colts (@Colts) July 20, 2016
Trying to surprise fans doesn't always work out. pic.twitter.com/fkxmAi9GP0
Pat McAfee tried to surprise a fan, and turned it into an improvised ballad for an empty house
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
Indianapolis Colts punter Pat McAfee went on a trip to help surprise some diehard fans at their home. A realization set in while he was knocking on the front door of the season ticket holders: They weren’t there. Now, this situation have a few possible outcomes.
- You give up.
- You keep knocking.
- You call someone who might know who lives there.
Instead McAfee took the oft-overlooked fourth option. He decided to sing outside their front door in a hopeless attempt to be noticed. “Hello ... It’s Pat” isn’t going to be blazing up the Billboard charts anytime soon, but I posit there’s more to this song than meets the eye.
Consider that he starts with “Hello” in a timbre that sounds a whole lot like Lionel Ritchie’s titular song. There’s a pause before he says “It’s the Colts” because the punter has just had a realization: He’s there to surprise folks, they have no idea he’s there — so saying “Is it me you’re looking for” would make absolutely no sense. Especially since there was literally nobody there to look for him.
This is some Grade-A song improvisation.
