We are on February 26 and “The Pat McAfee Show” runs in Indianapolis the week of the NFL scout combination. McAfee is sitting behind a desk. In front of him is an arc of chairs, occupied by some of what he describes as his “Stooges” and a star guest: Adam Schefter, the initiate of the NFL of ESPN.
The presence of Schefter and the scouting of the NFL 2025 combine the logo behind the chairs which apparently prefer the subject of the day. However, McAfee has a different subject in his mind.
He teases the subject, asking Schefter: “Have you heard of Ole Miss?” One of his cohorts says: “There is a cleaning of three …” that, McAfee adds: “has really captivated the internet.” After a little more accumulation, McAfee plunges.
“Some Ole Miss Frat Bro, K? Had a girlfriend KD (Kappa Delta),” said McAfee, then underlines the word “allegedly”.
“At this precise moment, this is what is reported by … everyone on the internet: Dad had sex with her son’s girlfriend.” Another person on Set Carilly in – “not great” – and then McAfee adds: “And then he was made public … This is the absolute situation of the worst case.”
Schefter, who seems confusing and uncomfortable in the chair closest to McAfee, tries to redirect the conversation: “So, where is (Ole Miss Quarterback) Jaxson Dart in all this?”
McAfee never appoints the first year of the 18 -year -old University at the center of rumor, but he jokes on the Fathers of Ole Miss Fathers in the NFL – “We just wonder. His father … We just try to combine assessing …” So another person in set interjection: “Ole Miss Paps erases meat at the moment.”
The segment lasts about two minutes. McAfee worked a rumor on the Internet without foundation in his program, then went to the analysis of the Dart stock and evolved.
Mary Kate Cornett, the first year of the college at the center of the rumor, wishes to be able to do the same.
Five weeks ago, she was a major first year company with another student in Ole Miss. Happy. Confident. Outgoing. Then, his idyllic first year experience was pierced on February 25 when a fallacious affirmation about him and the father of his boyfriend spread over Yikyak, an anonymous application based on popular messages from students. He then gained ground on X and collided with the ecosystem of sports discussions to become a high-level subject that day. Many items presented a photo of Cornett from his Instagram account.
The next day, McAfee became the most influential sporting personality to address rumor when he shared it with his ESPN viewers. (His program also has 2.8 million subscribers on YouTube.) But it was not alone. The former NFL recipient, Antonio Brown, published a meme on Cornett on X. Two Barstool personalities – KFC Barstool and Jack Mac – referred to rumor on their personal social media accounts (the first published a video that was then deleted, and Mac promoted a same with the name of Cornett on X). The ESPN radio hosts in St. Louis impatiently dissected the “saga” in their morning show, with Doug Vaughn, a longtime local sports milk, making a dramatic reading of an alleged Snapchat message which accompanied one of the original messages. The station then promoted the clip on YouTube, Facebook, Tiktok and Instagram as part of an “Infidelity Alley” segment.
“When the most popular people started to publish, it was then that it really changed,” said Cornett, adding that they had brought legitimacy to “something completely false”.
While the rumor propagated, Cornett withdrew her name from the outside of her dormitory, but she always had vile messages slipped under her door. Campus police told her that she was a target and that she moved into emergency housing and went to online lessons.
The Houston police showed up with his mother, firearms drawn, in the early hours of February 27, in an apparent case of “booty” – when someone falsely reports a crime in the hope of placing emergency stakeholders to a residence. According to images of security cameras and a police report examined by AthleticsThe homicide division answered the call.
After the publication of its online phone number, Cornett’s voicemail was filled with degrading messages. In one, a man laughs saying that she was a “naughty girl” and asks her joyfully to call her. Another male caller says he also has a son, in case she is interested. Several people sent an SMS to her obscene messages, calling it “whore” and “slut” and advised him to commit suicide.
“The only way I could describe it is that it is as if you are walking with your daughter in the street, holding her hand, and a car mirror hangs her shirt and starts dragging her on the road. And all you can do is look,” said Cornett’s father, Justin. “You can’t get the car. You cannot prevent it from happening. You just need to sit down and look at your child being destroyed. ”
Cornett finally published a statement on Instagram calling for the “false”, “inexcusable” and “disturbing” charges. His boyfriend labeled the rumor “unequivocal” in his own position. Justin Cornett posted on Facebook that he had enlisted a private investigator to probe the “defamatory” cyber attack; He also said that the family had contacted Oxford police, Ole Miss Campus Security and the FBI on this subject. (The Oxford Police Service is investigating the issue.)
Cornett initiated a legal representation and said that she intended to take measures against McAfee and ESPN, which broadcasts her issue, and potentially other people involved in the spread of rumor. “I would like people to be responsible for what they have done,” she said. “You ruin my life by talking about it in your show for nothing other than attention, but here I stand up until 5 am, every night, throwing, I do not eat because I am so worried about what will happen for the rest of my life.”
An ESPN spokesperson refused to comment. McAfee, KFC Barstool and Jack Mac did not respond to messages asking for comments.
Monica Uddin, Cornett lawyer, based in Houston, said her legal team could also explore measures against those who could have promoted rumor in order to enjoy a cryptocurrency game. According to Geckoterminal, a cryptocurrency monitoring website, the same name with the name of Cornett was created on February 25 and jumped around 11 a.m. on February 26.
“This is only a version of the Far West of a very familiar problem,” said Uddin. “It’s just that it’s even worse because she is not a business. She is an 18 -year -old girl.”
Sitting in a conference room in a hotel about 90 miles from Oxford – a location that she chose because of her distance from the Ole Miss – Cornett campus expressed her perplexity about the reason why McAfee and other personalities from the sports media would amplify a false assertion that has nothing to do with sport. She is also angry that they are so insensitive.
“They don’t think it matters because they don’t know who I am and they think I deserve it,” said Cornett. “But I don’t do it.”
Adding Uddin: “They raised a lie from the worst corners of (x) to millions of general sports fans just to get a few more clicks and, in the end, a few more dollars. Although they do not have to face it, the lie is chained to Mary Kate for the rest of her life.”
Since his show began to broadcast on ESPN in 2023, McAfee described the player of the WNBA Caitlin Clark as “white slut”. (He apologized later.) On X, he joked a joke on the former gymnastics of Michigan and the United States Larry Nassar, who sexually abused hundreds of young girls and women. (He defended the reference in the middle of what he described as an “all-out assault” of the counterpoup.) Aaron Rodgers, the quarter-arre of the NFL, used a paid appearance in the McAfee show to falsely suggest that the host of Talk-Show Jimmy Kimmel was linked to the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. McAfee apologized for “to be part”.
McAfee, his acolytes and some of his guests are proud provocateurs, well aware of the line they make. Consider the warning that takes place at the opening of McAfee’s show:
Even Vaughn in St. Louis, who occupies a lower level on the scale of the sports media, nods in the places where he could go. His biography on X says: “Opinions are mine, with the exception of those that could cause me legal troubles.” (Vaughn did not respond to a request for comments.)
But their adoption of a lie on a non -public figure in pursuing an influence on the Internet or a broader audience or, as the warning says, as “comic informative”, leads to a human cost.
In recent weeks, Cornett has been mainly locked in his room. She no longer dines in her sorority house or the student union. On the occasion of rare occasions, she goes out, she wears sunglasses and a hat. “I can’t even walk on campus without people taking pictures of me or shouting my name or telling me super vulgar and disgusting things,” she said.
She hoped that isolation would allow the storm to pass, but that has persisted. During a recent writing invitation in an online class, one of his classmates took a screenshot from his entry and published it online. “I just feel defeated, honestly,” said Cornett.
She turned to her family, friends and boyfriend for comfort, but they were also affected. His boyfriend was also the victim of online intimidation and tormented on campus. The grandfather of Cornett, 89, received a call in the middle of the night; Appealing him to the nargua about his granddaughter.
Cornett does not know if the false accusation will one day cost her a job she wants. She fears that the children she hopes to have one day would go online and read something that she has never done. And those who take care of it also feel helpless.
“These people … They can just say what they want and destroy the life of a young girl forever,” said Justin Cornett. “When you start to follow up like (they do), you are responsible for the company and the people you are talking about. You must know the impact of what you might say and how it could affect them. And not to consider this is ignorant and naive at best, and malicious and misleading and injuring in the worst.
“No one is immune to this kind of attack. It could happen to you, it could happen to someone you love.”
Before broadcasting the rumor on Cornett to his masses, McAfee opened his show of February 26 speaking of his young daughter, how he took her to Disney World (Disney is the mother company of ESPN) and how the witness of the “pure joy” of his daughter made him cry.
“Am I a big and Sappy Softy now that I have a daughter?” He asked his plots. “I think yes.”
– Athletics“S Carson Kessler contributed to this report.
(Illustration: John Bradford, Dan Goldfarb / Athletics; Sean Gardner / Getty images)
