Gregg Doyel

gregg.doyel@indystar.com

INDIANAPOLIS – This is the most Pat McAfee thing ever.

Retiring at age 29? Leaving millions of dollars on the table? To go into comedy? Who does that?

Indianapolis Colts punter Pat McAfee does it — he just did it — because he’s not like anyone else. In a world full of unique snowflakes, no two people being alike, McAfee is a blizzard unto himself.

Given that McAfee made $2.9 million this past season and could’ve punted for another decade — Houston Texans punter Shane Lechler is 40, Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri is 44 — he’d need a pretty damn big table to hold all the money he’s leaving behind. Walking away from $30 million in earnings, and probably much more given the way NFL salaries rise, might sound like the dumbest decision ever. Two things about that:

One, Pat McAfee is a borderline genius, and if I had to guess, he’s north of that border.

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Two, his earnings might actually go up now that he’s shed that whole football thing. Not many NFL players can make more money in their second career than their first — Michael Strahan comes to mind — but McAfee’s on that list given that beautiful mind of his.

And it’s beautiful, make no mistake about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah — he’s the idiot who jumped into the Broad Ripple canal and was fished out by the police. Seen his mugshot from that 2010 arrest? He doesn’t look smart. He looks drunk, which he was.

That was the mistake that saved his career and maybe even his life, because 23-year-old Pat McAfee was young and dumb and living it up one year into his NFL career, a blue-collar kid from the ‘Burgh succumbing to the clichéd life of the nouveau rich professional athlete — until life dumped a pail of Central Canal water over his head.

Now look at him. He uses that canal plunge as the self-deprecating punch line of a comedy act that is headliner-worthy, and not because he’s pretty funny for a punter. He’s funny, and then put a period on the sentence. Professional comedy is an exercise in advanced intellect, the sign of a brain moving faster than most of us can manage, and McAfee has one of those brains. On the Wonderlic test given to NFL prospects, he scored a 37 — which puts his IQ in the 98th percentile, according to Mensa.

McAfee has a photographic memory, by the way. He doesn’t like to talk about it, but I saw it before his comedy show at the Carmel Palladium in July 2015. At the VIP meet-and-greet, a line of 50 people waited for a moment with McAfee. He asked each of them their name, committed it to memory, and then addressed VIPs as they mingled before the show.

That’s a pretty good story. McAfee’s mom once told me a better one:

"At the (2009 NFL) rookie symposium, they gave players a list of something like 26 numbers in a row, to see how many they could recite from memory," Sally McAfee said. "Pat remembered all 26. He could say it forward and backward."

A beautiful mind, I’m telling you, and this guy has a similarly gifted leg. Whether he returns to the NFL or not, McAfee hasn’t kicked his last famous kick. He’s always wanted to make a YouTube video and watch it go viral as he launches the longest field goal ever recorded or strikes a soccer ball in excess of 130 mph, the neighborhood of the current world record. He believes he can do both — as well as smash the longest rugby punt — because he’s fooled around with it and come close. But he’s not going to do it for free. He’s wrestling with the idea of wearing a company’s shoe and doing it as a commercial.

Meanwhile, on company time, McAfee led the NFL in punting this past season with a 49.3-yard average.

And he’s walking away?

Well, yeah, because that brain of his gets restless. His ADD tires him to the point that he needs naps to recharge, and then he wakes up and stars in an on-court skit with the Harlem Globetrotters or hosts an IndyStar high school awards show or starts a foundation to raise money for veterans.

A brilliant snowflake, I’m saying, and 30 years from now he’ll be his era’s Frank Gifford or Ahmad Rashad or Michael Strahan, someone so famous off the field that the younger kids, the ones not born yet, will be surprised to learn that, wait a minute, Pat McAfee used to punt?

Yeah, youngster. He did. He used to punt as well as anyone ever has.

But he was better at other stuff.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter:@GreggDoyelStar or atfacebook.com/gregg.doyel

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