Pat McAfee spends plenty of time on camera for his ESPN show and analyst role on College GameDay, but for the first time, he is now on the big screen.
McAfee makes his acting debut in The Mosquito Bowl, Peter Berg‘s new sports war drama that follows the real-life story of four star college football players who join the Marines after Pearl Harbor. Before heading out to battle, they play a football game, dubbed the Mosquito Bowl, that goes down in history. McAfee appears in the movie as a Marines drill instructor, appearing alongside stars Nicholas Galitzine, Bill Skarsgard, Ray Nicholson and Tom Francis.
The film premiered at Los Angeles’ AFI Fest on Thursday, where McAfee walked the carpet and explained just how his movie moment came to be. He told The Hollywood Reporter that when Timothée Chalamet appeared on College GameDay in 2024, he brought a lot of Hollywood eyes with him — at the exact time that Mosquito Bowl was casting and McAfee was hooting and hollering for the Georgia Bulldogs on TV.
“I got a call like the next day that was like, ‘Excuse me, we were wondering if you would like to be a D.I. [drill instructor] in the movie The Mosquito Bowl,’” the sports personality recalled, admitting he was “a bit overwhelmed” by the idea and spent a week at the Marine Corps recruit training site in Parris Island, South Carolina to immerse himself in the role.
“I was scared to death, and I still have no idea how I did in there so I’m excited to watch it,” McAfee said, as he had not watched the film ahead of its premiere. He also revealed that Ari Emanuel — whose TKO owns the WWE, where McAfee makes occasional appearances — “saw something in me” when it came to acting.
“He presented it to me like, ‘Hey I think you could be an actor, if I find any roles or situations that pop up, would you be OK with that?’ And I go, ‘You got it.’ It had not really been something I thought I’d be good at, it’s not really something I was super interested in,” but after working on the movie, “I’ve fallen in love with the entire craft,” McAfee said. “It was the honor of a lifetime to be asked, and I left no stone unturned trying to crush it for them and hopefully I did.”
Berg also gave his take on the casting, as he initially questioned McAfee if he would be able to take the role seriously due to his busy ESPN schedule. On top of working with Marine recruits and drill instructors, the director said that McAfee “got secret acting coaching from Bradley Cooper, that’s an inside scoop,” as well as went to Tom Cruise for advice.
“He was calling actors that he knew, asking for advice, wanting to put on a good face for me. I was like, ‘Where did you learn all of these questions, where did you learn all of this stuff?’” Berg continued. “He was like, ‘Bradley Cooper, Tom Cruise.’ He wanted to learn how to do it and he did.”
The movie marks a reteaming between Berg and Buzz Bissinger, who are cousins and had early success when Berg adapted Bissinger’s book Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team and a Dream for TV. In 2022 the author wrote The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II, which touched a nerve as both of their fathers were Marines.
And of tackling the well-trodden World War II genre, Galitzine noted, “War movies have become a bit of a staple in the industry for the last however long, forever, but there was something unique about the project within the script and the dimension that these young men were real guys who were real college football stars and it just really felt like there was a strong sense of heart within the story.”
Nicholson — the 34-year-old son of Jack Nicholson — said he wrote Berg a letter “basically begging” to be a part of the film, and had specifically been looking to add a war movie to his resume. “The bond and the brotherhood that is caked into movies like this — at a certain point, flag fades away and you’re fighting for the man next to you and it’s a bizarro bond that you can’t have anywhere else,” he said, looking over at his castmates. “I love these guys, I think about them every single day.”
The Mosquito Bowl hits theaters Oct. 30 and starts streaming on Netflix on Nov. 25.