How a College Football Analyst Ate His Way Through Viral Fantasy Football Punishment

When Joe DeLeone prepared to pay off an overdue fantasy football punishment on Saturday, he knew he was in for a long day that he wouldn't soon forget. He just didn't expect it to go viral.

DeLeone, a college football analyst and on-air host for Bleav Network, became an internet sensation over the weekend when he posted about his league's unique punishment for finishing in last place - he'd have to spend up to 24 hours at his local McDonald's.

But, there's a catch: he could eat his way out of it.

The initial post drew plenty of interest on Friday with onlookers offering advice on the best way to attack the McDonald's menu. By the next morning, he was trending on X (formerly known as Twitter) with notable brand accounts and sports media personalities weighing in on his viral challenge.

One sportsbook jokingly offered betting odds on whether DeLeone would spend Over or Under 16 hours in McDonald's. He eventually crushed the Under (-140), checking in at eight hours, more than 7,000 calories, and nearly 5,000 new followers.

"I had no idea that it would balloon the way it did ..." DeLeone told Sportsbook Review in an exclusive interview on Tuesday. "It never really totally clicked with me how much recognition it was getting just because I was having so much fun doing it."

Our C Jackson Cowart caught up with DeLeone about his viral moment, how he survived the McDonald's challenge, and what his future holds on and off the virtual gridiron. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q&A with Joe DeLeone after "McDonald's challenge"

First off, what did you do to deserve this day of punishment and gluttony? Who wronged you on the football field?

(laughs) It's from two years ago when I had to do the punishment, and I kept putting it off and my leaguemates were on me trying to get me to do it. I was just barely the last team out of the playoffs, I was 7-7 and had a decent team, couple injuries early on in the year and surged late but just missed the playoffs.

I kind of mailed it in and wasn't paying attention during that playoff period, and I lost the first-round consolation game. And as we've always done it, even if you have a good team and you lose that first-round game, you go on to play in the Toilet Bowl - and if you lose that, no matter what your record was, you finish in last place.

The other team was terrible, he had three wins, my team was doing fine and his was doing really well going into Monday Night Football. I had Joe Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase and I was only down by like 30-something points, I thought I was going to have a cakewalk victory and I would just turn the page and not even think about it ... and that was the incident that happened with Damar Hamlin.

(Editor's note: the NFL cancelled the remainder of the Jan. 5, 2023 game between the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals after Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest midway through the first quarter.)

It's just such a complex, difficult scenario and I didn't want to be overly reactive and freak out about it. So I just kind of took it on the chin as my leaguemates were making fun of me for a couple months that I came in last place. I did not think I'd actually end up doing the punishment because I kept putting it off, but it got to the point where they really wanted to see me do it.

That might be the only instance in NFL history that you just can't appeal. You just go, "Alright, you know what, I've got to take that one."

Right? And I remember when that happened there were a lot of people that were in championships, and my co-host and best friend Sean Anderson was saying that he had a similar situation that year where he won his championship and gave a little consolation to the person he beat. But I know it impacted a lot of people, so a lot of people know exactly what I'm talking about.

There was no part of you that wanted to split this 12 hours apiece with the other guy? There were no discussions of that?

(laughs) I will admit, I came into this thinking this could be something fun. As an aspiring full-time on-air host, I've done a lot of radio guest spots covering the draft, covering college football, trying to build a following. So I thought, "Hey, my followers like when I do stupid stuff just being authentic and having fun, and maybe this will get a little bit of love." I had no idea that it would balloon the way it did, and I think it was the perfect timing of it being in the middle of June when there's just nothing going on football-wise.

At what point did you realize when you posted that tweet, "OK, this thing might really blow up?"

Honestly, I don't even know if that really ever hit me. I've had tweets that have gotten a few thousand likes before, and I woke up the next morning and it had a few thousand likes, and I was like, "Oh that's great, this is super cool, I'll live tweet it and maybe it'll get a little bit more buzz." And because my phone was blowing up and I had so many notifications, it didn't really register until the end of the day that it ended up getting 34,000 likes and as much viewership as it did. So it never really totally clicked with me how much recognition it was getting just because I was having so much fun doing it.

How were you feeling that morning as you drove to McDonald's?

I was very hungry, and I was also excited. I ran 13 miles that morning; I do a lot of long-distance running so when I knew I was going to do the McDonald's thing, I tried to time it to do a super long run to burn a lot of calories, and I think that might have been the longest that I'd done. I knew it would help me at the beginning if I was super hungry, but I was just excited to hop into a McDonald's and get some food and then just went from there.

What was some of the best advice that you got from people online going into that day? What was some of the worst?

There were so many comments it was kind of hard to keep track. One of my other co-hosts, Blake Ruffino, recommended that I eat as many of the big breakfasts as possible, so that was probably the best. I saw some people saying I should eat as many Filet-O-Fishes as I can. I couldn't even eat a single Filet-O-Fish, those are gross.

So talk me through the overall strategy of this. I saw you talk about going "full PFF" on the minutes reduced vs. calories intake. Did that research end up helping you or hurting you more in the end?

It didn't hurt me to the point where it derailed me, but it definitely hurt me because as much as calories are important, one thing that doesn't get accounted for is just general grease. I was trying to plan this in a way that I was eating as few calories as possible, so I ended up going with 17 hash browns. Ultimately that was a mistake because those were so, so greasy.

I think it was to my advantage eating all the apples that I did, and if I were to go back and redo it, I would have leaned less on the calories and more on things that gave me good value for the time that it took off, like the big breakfast with hotcakes. I ended up eating two of those.

What was the final menu in the end, and what was your total calorie intake?

Total calorie intake was around 7,000. It sounds like such a high number, but if you think about the amount of times that maybe you're on vacation and having drinks and going out to eat or whatever, most people have crossed that threshold without realizing it. But it ended up being two big breakfasts with hotcakes, 17 hash browns, 23 apple slice packets - which is like four apple slices per packet - and then four McChickens.

Do you have any estimate for the pure ounces worth of grease that you consumed? Maybe poundage is more appropriate?

Oof, man. Yeah, I don't know if I can throw a number on that one, but it felt like I had eaten 100 pounds worth of food after I finished those hash browns.

I heard you mention that you had a $100 bet that you'd get out of there in eight hours. Were you pretty confident that you'd be able to do that?

I will admit that side bet was a lot of motivation. My buddy made the spreadsheet, and he and I talk a lot of smack to one another. After my one friend had done it in 14 hours, he was really coming at me and I was like, "Oh this is going to be easy, I'm going to get in and out of there in eight hours."

So he started pressing me and he's like, "I bet you $100 that you won't. I'll give you nine hours, I bet you're not gonna do it." So I knew going into that, even if I didn't live tweet it and it was a quiet day and nobody knew I had done it, I was trying to get to eight hours no matter what.

Whose idea was it that you and your friend before you would have the opportunity to eat your way out of it?

So our fantasy league is our high school group of friends, and we didn't used to do a punishment every single year. A few years ago, we decided that we wanted to start holding people accountable because we thought it'd be more fun and it was also a way for us to stay even closer because we're all over the country now.

Originally the first person who did the punishment was supposed to do the Waffle House challenge - which is sitting in a Waffle House for 24 hours and every waffle you eat takes off an hour - but we couldn't find one that was in close distance for him because he's in New Jersey. So that birthed the McDonald's challenge.

It's not necessarily going to be a recurring challenge for us because there was deliberation on what I was going to do, and eventually I pitched, "Well, why don't I just do the McDonald's thing like our friend Michael did?" And that's how it came together that I did it.

When you walked out of there like a free man, what was that post-McDonald's haze like for you?

It's almost hard to describe. I was very, very groggy. It almost felt like I was, not necessarily drunk but there was a lot of brain fog. It was very clearly like my body had a lot of ... I don't want to say garbage but ...

This isn't a sponsored article, I think we can be honest here.

(laughs) It was enough fast food that it really bogged down my ability to think quickly. I really just wanted to take a nap. Luckily, I made sure to take a walk afterwards and it gave me a little bit more energy to burn off more of those calories. But I definitely was groggy, definitely wanted to go home, definitely wanted to lay down.

At the time you might not have seen all the comments, but afterwards I'm sure you saw just how many name brands were trying to capitalize on your viral moment. Were there any encounters that particularly stuck out to you?

I had a lot of people reach out to do radio spots and whatnot. I think one thing that does get missed in this, like some of the articles that have been published have been like, "NFL fan does McDonald's challenge." I consider myself to be an on-air host, a content creator, and I've done plenty of radio spots before, so a lot of the people who reached out to me were in markets that I had appeared on before. So nothing necessarily with the radio stuff was too surreal, but I was obviously very grateful to connect with anyone that I did.

I really like Barstool and I really like Big Cat, and he just followed me out of the blue yesterday. That was probably the coolest thing that came out of it, I was just blown away. And then the Dude Wipes interaction I had, they DM'ed me and said the social media manager lived around the corner, so he brought me a little box of them and put on the mascot head and took a picture with me, so that was very funny. That was very smart on their end to take advantage of the publicity.

So how are you going to avoid doing this same thing next year? Would you do it again for the content, or do you have too much fantasy football integrity?

(laughs) I don't know if I'd do it again for the content. I think there's only one of these that can happen in my lifetime. Admittedly, I would like to move on from it to an extent, but I'm confident I'm not going to be finishing last place. It was an aberration. It was a very, very rare occurrence that I landed where I did because I'm usually a pretty consistent playoff team.

Is there anything else that you wish people knew about this, or any sort of wisdom you can pass on as someone who survived the McDonald's challenge?

I think just in general, I'm grateful for how excited everyone was and appreciated how everybody was bought in and enjoying it and so positive. It's one of the few times I think on the internet where everyone was just having a good time. No one was really in there criticizing, and it wasn't generating a wide range of reactions; everybody was just on the same team watching this guy chill in a McDonald's.

I will say, I do hope and have aspirations that this helps me continue to grow my brand and eventually lead to my goal of becoming a full-time on-air host. I've made a lot of strides in the past year, which has probably been the most successful for me for a lot of the work that I do and the recognition that I've gotten for doing it, but I really hope to get to that next step and go from being a producer to eventually being a host.

You can follow Joe DeLeone on X @joedeleone. To listen to his coverage of college football, check out Hack City and The Ruffino & Joe Show on the Bleav Podcast Network. He is also the podcast producer for The College Football Enquirer on Yahoo Sports.