34: The Alex McPherson Story

Football is a game of numbers. Auburn football placekicker Alex McPherson knows that better than anyone.

On Saturday, though, only one number mattered to him. It wasn’t 21.5, the number of points the Tigers were expected to lose by that day against Georgia. It wasn’t 93,033, the number of screaming fans surrounding him, most praying that the moment would be too big for him. 55 wasn’t the magic number either, which was the number of pounds lighter his 165-pound frame was two years ago, nearly to the day.

No, the only number that mattered to McPherson was 34, the number of yards between his holder, Auburn punter Hudson Kaak, and the uprights that could seal one of the biggest upsets in program history for his Tigers.

The math was not always so simple for McPherson, though. In fact, just two years ago, the 23-year-old was so sick that he wasn’t sure he’d ever kick again.

“I would run to the bathroom 15-20 times a day,” McPherson said last year. “I thought I just had the flu or a stomach bug or something going on. My weight was down. I had lost 20 pounds.”

And that was just the first week. Over the course of a few months, McPherson underwent rigorous testing until April, when he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. He was prescribed a popular medicine and was expected to improve, but things only got worse for the 21-year-old.

“I started to lose weight randomly, just out of nowhere,” he recalls. “Then I started throwing up every day… They told me that there were two medications that they wanted me to try first. They said they usually work, but if they don’t, we will have to look at getting your colon removed. I was like, there’s no way I’ll get to that point.”

Early signs looked good; the second medication seemed to improve McPherson’s condition.

“It was like a light switch flipped,” says McPherson. “I felt immediately better.”

However, as time went on, McPherson’s condition worsened again, and after another round of failed medication, the surgery that was once a last resort seemed to be the only option. 

When McPherson was finally admitted to the hospital, he weighed just 110 pounds.

“I definitely had moments where I was down, and it was really hard on me and my family,” he says. “But my family, we’re people of faith, and that’s what I fell back on. No matter what happens, whether I’m able to play football again or not, life’s going to go on, and I’m going to be OK.”

Eight months after his initial diagnosis, McPherson underwent surgery that removed his entire large intestine and created a stoma, an opening in his abdomen, that allows waste to pass through into an ostomy bag, which he wears under his pads. 

The road to recovery was a brutal one, and few thought he would ever see the field again, but McPherson had the full support of the Auburn family, along with his wife Hannah, whom he proposed to in May of 2024. 

“She took care of me and has been such a big part of this,” he says. “She was right there in the fire with me.”

McPherson’s best advice? Find someone who’s been there before. For him, it was former San Diego kicker Rolf Benirschke, who kicked for the Chargers from 1977 to 1986 and, like McPherson, had ulcerative colitis that required surgery, though Benirschke actually needed two ostomy bags.