Ole Miss student says her life was ruined after ESPN's Pat McAfee amplified a false rumor about her

Independent

01-04-2025

An Ole Miss freshman says that she wants to hold ESPN star Pat McAfee and other sports media personalities 'accountable' for 'ruining my life' by amplifying false rumors about her on their programs, according to The Athletic.
'They don't think it matters, because they don't know who I am and they think that I deserve it,' 18-year-old Mary Kate Cornett said about the false claims. 'But I don't.'
During the Feb. 26 broadcast of his podcast, which is simulcast on ESPN, McAfee cut into his analysis of the NFL scouting combine to broach a much different topic. Speaking to his self-described 'stooges' and ESPN's NFL insider Adam Schefter, McAfee decided to speak at length about an unsubstantiated and salacious story that had been bubbling up on social media.
Asking his crew if they'd 'heard about Ole Miss,' prompting one of his sidekicks to declare 'there's a menage a trois,' McAfee says there's a rumor that's 'really captivated the internet.' With a confused and uncomfortable Schefter looking on, McAfee then goes into the details.
'Some Ole Miss frat bro, k? Had a K-D (Kappa Delta) girlfriend,' he exclaimed, without mentioning the girl at the center of the rumor. ''At this exact moment, this is what is being reported by … everybody on the internet: Dad had sex with son's girlfriend.'
He went on to say that the 'absolute worst-case scenario' was that 'it was made public,' before Schefter eventually tried to shift the conversation back to the upcoming NFL draft: 'So where is (Ole Miss quarterback) Jaxson Dart in all this?'
Though he never said Cornett's name, who was the teenager at the center of this wild rumor, McAfee continued to joke about 'shoehorning' college fathers into their combine analysis while one of his cohorts joked: 'Ole Miss dads are slinging meat right now.'
A day before McAfee's broadcast, Cornett said that her world came crashing down around her when a specious claim about her having an affair with her boyfriend's father was suddenly posted on the anonymous social media app YikYak. It found life on X (formerly Twitter), where it was a top trending topic, and soon made its way to the male-dominated sports talk universe, including McAfee's highly rated show.
While McAfee was the most prominent sports media personality that boosted the story, he was hardly alone. KFC Barstool and Jack Mac from Barstool Sports also referenced it on their social media accounts, with Jack Mac going so far as to promote a memecoin based on Cornett. St. Louis sports talk host Doug Vaughn dramatically recounted the 'saga' on a local ESPN station, which later promoted the clip on Instagram as an entry into the 'Infidelity Alley' series.
Representatives for McAfee, Barstool Sports and Vaughn did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ESPN declined to comment.
'When the more popular people started posting, that's when it really, really changed,' Cornett told The Athletic, adding that they legitimized something that was 'completely false.'
The amplification of the spurious rumor led to rampant harassment of not just Cornett but also her family and boyfriend. The day after McAfee's segment, for instance, her mother was the victim of a 'swatting' incident when police showed up to her Houston home with guns drawn. Cornett also received countless degrading and obscene voicemails when her phone number was posted online.
'The only way I could describe it is it's like you're walking with your daughter on the street, holding her hand, and a car mirror snags her shirt and starts dragging her down the road. And all you can do is watch,' Cornett's father, Justin, told The Athletic. 'You can't catch the car. You can't stop it from happening. You just have to sit there and watch your kid be destroyed.'
Both her boyfriend and Cornett have taken to social media to release statements denying the accusations as 'unequivocally false' and 'disturbing,' while her father has enlisted a private investigator to look into the 'defamatory' attack. Justin Cornett has also contacted the FBI and local police to investigate the matter.
Meanwhile, Cornett has retained attorney Monica Uddin as she intends to take legal action against McAfee and ESPN. 'I would like people to be held accountable for what they've done,' Cornett said. 'You're ruining my life by talking about it on your show for nothing but attention, but here I am staying up until 5 in the morning, every night, throwing up, not eating because I'm so anxious about what's going to happen for the rest of my life.'
Uddin also said she's going to explore possible action over the launch of the memecoin named after Cornett. 'This is just a Wild West version of a very familiar problem,' she said. 'It's just that it's even worse because it's not a company. It's an 18-year-old girl.'
McAfee has become one of the biggest names in sports media in recent years. Besides making $17 million a year from ESPN to air his popular podcast, the former NFL punter has become a familiar face on the network's College GameDay broadcasts. He's also become a familiar face to pro-wrestling fans, as he's a color commentator for WWE's long-running Monday Night Raw program.
At the same time, McAfee has courted controversy with his 'progrum,' which he claims is just a 'collection of stooges' talking about sports and 'to be comedic informative.' The show's disclaimer acknowledges that it regularly goes over the line, specifically stating: 'p.s. Don't sue us.'
McAfee, who counts controversial NFL star Aaron Rodgers as a close pal and even paid the quarterback to regularly appear on his program, has let his program be a platform for some of Rodgers' most conspiratorial rants about vaccines. Additionally, Rodgers suggested to McAfee that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel was a client of disgraced sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, prompting Kimmel to threaten a lawsuit.
McAfee would later apologize for his role in the kerfuffle, as well as to WNBA star Caitlin Clark for referring to her as a 'white b****,' claiming his 'intentions' were to be 'complimentary.'