Student Breaks Her Silence on Pat McAfee 'Ruining My Life'

ESPN star Pat McAfee aims to keep his show on the network lighthearted and entertaining. However, it's become clear that he recently stepped over the line and caused some real hurt by amplifying a false story, and now the victim is speaking out.

During an episode of "The Pat McAfee Show" on ESPN in February, the sports media personality shared a baseless rumor that he said "captivated the internet." 

“Some Ole Miss frat bro, k? Had a K-D (Kappa Delta) girlfriend,” McAfee said on the show. He then stressed the word “allegedly,” presumably recognizing that the story was unverified and could be untrue before sharing it anyway.

“At this exact moment, this is what is being reported by … everybody on the internet: Dad had sex with son’s girlfriend,” McAfee said. “And then it was made public … that’s the absolute worst-case situation.”

The problem is, the story was completely and unequivocally false, and McAfee played a big part in spreading it.

While McAfee never mentioned the 18-year-old college freshman at the center of the rumor by name, he amplified the story to millions of people watching on ESPN as well as his 2.8 million YouTube subscribers. And now the victim of the baseless rumor is speaking out.

In an interview with The Athletic, Mary Kate Cornett broke her silence as she called out McAfee for "ruining my life" and wants him held accountable.

Cornett said that after McAfee shared the rumor on his story, appearing to add some legitimacy to the story, she began to receive a lot of harassment and threats.

“When the more popular people started posting, that’s when it really, really changed,” Cornett said.

She says she received harassing and threatening notes under her dorm room door, causing her to have to move out of her dorm and take online classes for her own safety. She also began to receive distributing and threatening calls and texts when her phone number was made public online.

Cornett has engaged legal representation and now plans to take action against the ESPN star.

“I would like people to be held accountable for what they’ve done,” she 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.”

McAfee did not offer a comment on the incident, and The Athletic reports that ESPN declined to make a statement.