It’s Feb. 26, and “The Pat McAfee Present” is filming in Indianapolis the week of the NFL Scouting Mix. McAfee sits behind a desk. Earlier than him is an arc of chairs, occupied by a number of of what he describes as his “stooges” and a featured visitor: Adam Schefter, ESPN’s NFL insider.
Schefter’s presence and the 2025 NFL Scouting Mix brand behind the chairs seemingly previews the day’s material. Nonetheless, McAfee has a unique matter on his thoughts.
He teases the topic, asking Schefter: “Have you ever heard about Ole Miss?” Considered one of his cohorts says, “There’s a ménage à trois …” that, McAfee provides, “has actually captivated the web.” After some extra buildup, McAfee dives in.
“Some Ole Miss frat bro, ok? Had a Okay-D (Kappa Delta) girlfriend,” McAfee says, after which he stresses the phrase “allegedly.”
“At this precise second, that is what’s being reported by … all people on the web: Dad had intercourse with son’s girlfriend.” One other individual on set chimes in – “Not nice” – after which McAfee provides: “After which it was made public … that’s absolutely the worst-case state of affairs.”
Schefter, trying befuddled and uncomfortable within the chair closest to McAfee, tries to redirect the dialog: “So the place is (Ole Miss quarterback) Jaxson Dart in all this?”
McAfee by no means names the 18-year-old faculty freshman on the heart of the rumor, however he jokes about shoehorning Ole Miss fathers into NFL Draft evaluation — “We’re simply questioning. His dad … We’re simply attempting to mix consider …” Then one other individual on set interjects: “Ole Miss dads are slinging meat proper now.”
The section lasts roughly two minutes. McAfee labored an unsubstantiated web rumor into his present, then transitioned to analyzing Dart’s draft inventory and moved on.
Mary Kate Cornett, the school freshman on the heart of the rumor, needs she may do the identical.
5 weeks in the past, she was a first-year enterprise main relationship one other Ole Miss scholar. Glad. Assured. Outgoing. Then her idyllic freshman expertise was pierced on Feb. 25 when a spurious declare about her and her boyfriend’s father unfold on YikYak, an nameless message-based app fashionable amongst faculty college students. It then gained traction on X and collided with the sports activities speak ecosystem to turn out to be a prime trending matter that day. Many posts featured an image of Cornett pulled from her Instagram account.
The next day, McAfee turned essentially the most influential sports activities persona to deal with the rumor when he shared it together with his ESPN viewers. (His present additionally has 2.8 million subscribers on YouTube.) However he was not alone. Former NFL receiver Antonio Brown posted a meme about Cornett on X. Two Barstool personalities — KFC Barstool and Jack Mac — referenced the rumor on their private social media accounts (the previous posted a video that was later deleted, and Mac promoted a memecoin with Cornett’s identify on X). ESPN radio hosts in St. Louis eagerly dissected the “saga” on their morning present, with Doug Vaughn, a longtime native sportscaster-turned-host, doing a dramatic studying of a purported Snapchat message that accompanied one of many authentic posts. The station then promoted the clip on YouTube, Fb, TikTok and Instagram as a part of an “Infidelity Alley” section.
“When the extra fashionable individuals began posting, that’s when it actually, actually modified,” Cornett mentioned, including that they introduced legitimacy to “one thing utterly false.”
Because the rumor unfold, Cornett eliminated her identify from exterior her dorm room, however she nonetheless had vile messages slipped beneath her door. Campus police advised her she was a goal, and she or he moved into emergency housing and switched to on-line programs.
Houston police confirmed as much as her mom’s home, weapons drawn, within the early hours of Feb. 27, in an obvious occasion of “swatting” – when somebody falsely reviews a criminal offense in hopes of dispatching emergency responders to a residence. Based on safety digicam footage and a police report reviewed by The Athletic, the murder division responded to the decision.
After her cellphone quantity was posted on-line, Cornett’s voicemail was stuffed with degrading messages. In a single, a person laughs as he says that she’s been a “naughty woman” and cheerfully asks her to offer him a name. One other male caller says that he has a son, too, in case she’s . A number of individuals texted her obscene messages, calling her a “whore” and a “slut” and suggested her to kill herself.
“The one approach I may describe it’s it’s such as you’re strolling together with your daughter on the road, holding her hand, and a automobile mirror snags her shirt and begins dragging her down the street. And all you are able to do is watch,” Cornett’s father, Justin, mentioned. “You possibly can’t catch the automobile. You possibly can’t cease it from taking place. You simply have to sit down there and watch your child be destroyed.”
Cornett ultimately launched an announcement on Instagram calling the accusations “false,” “inexcusable” and “disturbing.” Her boyfriend labeled the rumor “unequivocally false” in his personal submit. Justin Cornett posted on Fb that he had enlisted a personal investigator to probe the “defamatory” cyberattack; he additionally mentioned the household had contacted Oxford police, Ole Miss campus safety and the FBI in regards to the matter. (The Oxford police division is investigating the matter.)
Cornett engaged authorized illustration and mentioned she intends to take motion towards McAfee and ESPN, which airs his present, and probably others concerned in spreading the rumor. “I would love individuals to be held accountable for what they’ve executed,” she mentioned. “You’re ruining my life by speaking about it in your present for nothing however consideration, however right here I’m staying up till 5 within the morning, each evening, throwing up, not consuming as a result of I’m so anxious about what’s going to occur for the remainder of my life.”
An ESPN spokesperson declined to remark. McAfee, KFC Barstool and Jack Mac didn’t reply to messages in search of remark.
Monica Uddin, Cornett’s Houston-based lawyer, mentioned her authorized group can also discover motion towards those that could have promoted the rumor in an try to revenue from a cryptocurrency play. Based on GeckoTerminal, a cryptocurrency monitoring web site, the memecoin with Cornett’s identify was created on Feb. 25 and surged at round 11 a.m. on Feb. 26.
“That is only a Wild West model of a really acquainted downside,” Uddin mentioned. “It’s simply that it’s even worse as a result of it’s not an organization. It’s an 18-year-old woman.”
Sitting in a convention room at a lodge about 90 miles from Oxford — a location she selected due to its distance from the Ole Miss campus — Cornett expressed bewilderment as to why McAfee and different sports activities media personalities would amplify a false declare that has nothing to do with sports activities. She can be indignant that they’d be so callous.
“They don’t suppose it issues, as a result of they don’t know who I’m and so they suppose that I deserve it,” Cornett mentioned. “However I don’t.”
Added Uddin: “They elevated a lie from the worst corners of (X) to tens of millions of common sports activities followers simply to get a number of extra clicks and in the end a number of extra {dollars}. Whereas they don’t need to cope with it after it airs, the lie is chained to Mary Kate for the remainder of her life.”
Since his present started airing on ESPN in 2023, McAfee described WNBA participant Caitlin Clark as a “White bitch.” (He later apologized.) On X, he made a joke about former Michigan State and USA Gymnastics physician Larry Nassar, who sexually abused a whole bunch of younger women and girls. (He defended the reference within the midst of what he described as an “all-out onslaught” of backlash.) Aaron Rodgers, the NFL quarterback, used a paid look on McAfee’s present to falsely counsel that speak present host Jimmy Kimmel was linked to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. McAfee apologized “for being part of it.”
McAfee, his sidekicks and a few of his visitors are proud provocateurs, nicely conscious of the road they toe. Take into account the disclaimer that runs on the opening of McAfee’s present:
Even Vaughn in St. Louis, who occupies a decrease rung on the sports activities media ladder, nods to the locations he could go. His bio on X states: “Opinions are my very own aside from those that would get me in authorized hassle.” (Vaughn didn’t reply to a request for remark.)
However their embrace of a falsehood a couple of private determine within the pursuit of web clout or a much bigger viewers or, because the disclaimer says, to be “comedic informative,” carries a human price.
In current weeks, Cornett has remained principally holed up in her room. She now not dines at her sorority home or the coed union. On the uncommon event she goes out, she wears sun shades and a hat. “I (can’t) even stroll on campus with out individuals taking footage of me or screaming my identify or saying tremendous vulgar, disgusting issues to me,” she mentioned.
She hoped that isolating would enable the storm to cross, nevertheless it continued. Throughout a current writing immediate in a web based class, certainly one of her classmates took a screenshot of her entry and posted it on-line. “I simply really feel defeated, actually,” Cornett mentioned.
She has turned to her household, associates and her boyfriend for consolation, however they’ve been impacted as nicely. Her boyfriend has additionally been bullied on-line and tormented on campus. Cornett’s 89-year-old grandfather obtained a name in the midst of the evening; the caller taunted him about his granddaughter.
Cornett doesn’t know if the false accusation will in the future price her a job she desires. She worries that the youngsters she hopes to have sometime will go browsing and examine one thing she by no means did. And people who take care of her really feel equally helpless.
“These of us … they’ll simply say no matter they need and destroy a younger woman’s life ceaselessly,” mentioned Justin Cornett. “While you start to have a following like (they do), you could have a accountability to society and to the individuals you talk about. You must know the affect of what you could be saying and the way it would possibly have an effect on them. And to not think about that’s ignorant and naive at greatest, and malicious and deceitful and hurtful at worst.
“Nobody’s secure from this kind of assault. It may occur to you, it may occur to somebody you’re keen on.”
Earlier than he broadcast the rumor about Cornett to his lots, McAfee opened his Feb. 26 present speaking about his younger daughter, how he took her to Disney World (Disney is ESPN’s guardian firm) and the way witnessing his daughter’s “pure pleasure” introduced tears to his eyes.
“Am I a giant, sappy softy now that I’ve a daughter?” he requested his stooges. “I believe so.”
— The Athletic’s Carson Kessler contributed to this report.
(Illustration: John Bradford, Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Sean Gardner / Getty Photos)