Notre Dame Leprechaun’s College GameDay Kick Wins $200K For Greater Chicago Food Depository

CHICAGO — Notre Dame’s Riley the Leprechaun won big for Chicago’s largest food bank over the weekend with an impressive second-chance field goal on “College GameDay.”

The Greater Chicago Food Depository was awarded $200,000 after the University of Notre Dame mascot’s participation in the ESPN college football preview show’s competition, which sees college students attempt a field goal for a chance for a cash prize.

In this case, the show also brought on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish’s mascot — identified only as Riley — to also try a field goal to win money for charity.

Riley on Saturday sent the pigskin flying between the goalposts and into the arms of Touchdown Jesus following a botched first attempt. Fighting Irish icon and NFL Hall Of Famer Joe Montana looked on in awe.

The leprechaun won a total of $500,000 for charity, with $200,000 going to the Food Depository, according to ESPN.

ESPN personality Pat McAfee’s kicking contest has become a regular feature of the ESPN College GameDay broadcast every Saturday during the NCAA football season. Notre Dame student Michael Milano also won $1 million off his kick, totaling Saturday’s winnings to $1.5 million.

The donation came as a complete shock but at an opportune time for the Food Depository, which has been strained in recent months due to rising prices and federal cuts to safety net programs like SNAP, communications director Jim Conwell said.

Roughly 225,000 people in Cook County have lost their food assistance benefits since SNAP cuts began being implemented last year, according to the Food Depository.

Conwell said that the hefty donation will be used to buy more food and help cover transportation costs amid skyrocketing diesel prices for the depository’s 65-truck fleet spread across the Chicago region.

“It’s incredibly impactful,” Conwell said. “You know, right now the need in our community for food assistance is rising … We know the cost of living is out of reach for a lot of local families, and so more people are turning to our network of food pantries and programs. So a gift of this size helps us meet the immediate need.”

Guinness’s charity arm, Guinness Gives Back, will be supplying the donated funds, Conwell said. Guinness has an established partnership with the food bank and donates 10,000 loaves of bread a year from Guinness’s Open Gate Brewery, 901 W. Kinzie St.

The Chicago Food Depository distributes about 128 million pounds of food a year, supplying many neighborhood food pantries, and is on pace to exceed that number in 2026, despite the rising operational costs, Conwell said.

He added that philanthropy can only cover some of the need that government services like SNAP can and urged leaders to work on reversing the policies of President Donald Trump’s second term.

“Charity is not going to ever be able to completely replace what a program like SNAP could do,” he said. “For years, the charitable food system and the government food system have worked in tandem, but at the scale of what the government does, there’s not enough charity to cover that difference.”

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