In late February, I caught wind of a salacious rumor involving students at Ole Miss. Obviously, since I do not make a habit of keeping apprised of the sex lives of college students, it came to my attention because it had already garnered a lot of attention online. The rumor was spreading via a photo of a paragraph of text from someone’s Snapchat DMs that had gone viral on YikYak, a social media app primarily used by students.
Which makes sense, since this was exactly the sort of rumor that spreads like wildfire on a college campus. It has all the hallmarks: a sorority girl breaking a sexual taboo and being called a slut for it. Anyone who has ever been 18 has heard some version of a rumor like this; they rival crypto as the favored currency among those too young to legally drink. There is not a fully formed pre-frontal cortex to be found in these situations. Most people that age haven’t seen the damage that kind of rumor can do, or they don’t care, and so off it goes into the ether, to live as a vaguely remembered story you once heard about someone.
This particular rumor, however, did not. Instead, a whole host of college football reporters not only started talking about it on their public feeds, but linked to the alleged girl’s Instagram account, promoting some kind of memecoin someone had made. Antonio Brown posted a meme about it, and Barstool Sports personalities Kevin Clancy and Jack McGuire also referenced the rumor. Within a day of this unfounded, completely unverified rumor about a random college student circulating widely online, Pat McAfee was discussing it on ESPN.
McAfee, who is 37 years old and a father, seems to have no awareness that there are a different set of rules that apply to what can be said on live television than there are for what you can elbow your buddy about at the bar. It’s that lack of instinct historically that has led him to calling WNBA star Caitlin Clark a “white bitch,” then apologizing; and allowing Aaron Rodgers to imply that Jimmy Kimmel was linked to pedophile Jeffery Epstein, then half-heartedly apologizing.
Clark and Kimmel, at least, are public figures. In this instance, he begins the segment by asking that episode’s featured guest, ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter, “Have you heard about Ole Miss?” Schefter, who either does not know what he’s talking about or is trying to avoid the conversation, responds, “I’ve been there. The Grove?” McAfee digs in, asking, “So you have not heard about the last 12 hours?” The other co-hosts get a few little quips in, and then McAfee lays out this college campus rumor to an audience of millions. “I tell you what, there’s some Greek life getting called into question. All about the K-Ds, I think,” he says. “Have you heard anything about any of this?” he asks Schefter again, who shakes his head, lips pursed.
“There’s a lot going on. Lot of moving parts. And one of them’s a lot older than the other one … the other two actually,” McAfee says, with all the clarity of someone who has just ordered an eighth pitcher of beer. “What did I miss here?” Schefter asks, confused.
“Some kid's dad had … allegedly. There’s a lot to it. It’s not a good situation for all parties. Trust is going to be ruined for everybody,” McAfee says before continuing to lay out a rumor on a national television platform. "Some Ole Miss frat bro, K? Had a K-D [Kappa Delta] girlfriend,” he says. And then he says “allegedly” with all the legal confidence of somebody who has watched Suits before sharing all the details of the rumor live on air. McAfee doesn’t say her name, but he doesn’t have to. He gives enough information that anyone watching could go online at that moment and find out exactly who she was.
The clip of McAfee spreading this rumor is still up. It has been viewed on Twitter 1.8 million times. The story has since been covered by People, TMZ, The New York Post, and a myriad of local news sites.
This week, Katie Strang at The Athletic published a story about the effects of this action on the actual 19-year-old girl whose name was being smeared without any evidence. Her name is Mary Kate Cornett and she is a freshman. She does have a boyfriend, and he has a father, but none of the scandal or drama or accusations are true.
“When the more popular people started posting, that’s when it really, really changed,” Cornett told The Athletic. The consequences for Cornett were real. Her mother’s house in Houston was swatted, her phone number was posted online and her voicemail was filled by strangers. She was told to kill herself, texted obscene messages. “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,” she told Strang.
“I’m not a public figure that you can go talk about on your show to get more views,” Cornett told NBC News, adding, "I am a normal 19-year-old college freshman. That’s it. I was happy. I had a great friend group.”
You can imagine a world (perhaps you have even experienced it) where this rumor follows Cornett around the campus and the dining hall. Maybe it ruins her experience at Ole Miss, makes it so that she cannot even go to the library without people pointedly whispering. But it is localized. It is contained. In that world, a normal ecosystem for a rumor to exist in, Cornett could leave Ole Miss and that community and leave this behind if she wanted.
That is no longer an option when five fully grown sports commentators are spewing opinions and jokes about your sex life on the television. When you watch the clip of McAfee’s show, it is so obvious that they must know that this story has no actual news value. Someone mentions the Ole Miss quarterback, and they shoehorn it in. Four of the men have heard this rumor and are trying to dance around it with their little jokes about Ole Miss fraternities canceling parents' weekend and threesomes.
Sports talk radio, which I have listened to my whole life, has always had an undercurrent of misogyny to it. “For traditional media companies like Disney-owned ESPN, this exposes the fine line between staying young and edgy while still honoring its Mickey Mouse, family-friendly values,” Andrew Marchand wrote in The Athletic, where he compared McAfee’s comments to those made by Don Imus in 2007. McAfee may try—desperately, sweatily—to be edgy, but he is not all that young.
And that is what is most upsetting about watching them talk about Cornett’s life. There is a kind of glee among middle-aged men in sports media like McAfee that appears in their face when they have an opportunity to destroy a young woman. It does not matter that this rumor had nothing to do with sports, was nowhere near his community, and is about a woman half his age. “They don’t think it matters, because they don’t know who I am and they think that I deserve it,” Cornett said. “But I don’t.”
Cornett intends to take legal action. Her attorney, Monica Udden told NBC News that she believes that there are grounds for a defamation case. “Defamation has existed for a long time. You can’t lie about someone with impunity—and that’s what has happened to Mary Kate,” Uddin said. “You can’t lie for money.” Pat McAfee is in the middle of a five-year contract that will pay him $85 million.
