‘Zero journalistic integrity,’ father fumes as Pat McAfee turns daughter Mary Kate Cornett’s nightmare into primetime entertainment on ESPN | NFL News

Pat McAfee opened his ESPN show on Feb. 26 talking about his daughter and her “pure joy” at Disney World. A few minutes later, he pivoted into a story that would tear apart someone else’s daughter.
“Some Ole Miss frat bro, k? Had a K-D girlfriend,” McAfee said, emphasizing “allegedly.” Then he dropped the line that turned an anonymous post into a media circus:
“Dad had sex with son’s girlfriend.”
He never said her name. But Mary Kate Cornett, the 18-year-old freshman at Ole Miss, became the face of the rumor anyway.
It started on YikYak, then spread to X. A meme from Antonio Brown. Mentions from Barstool personalities. ESPN radio shows dramatizing fake Snapchats. And finally, McAfee—with 2.8 million YouTube subscribers and a national ESPN platform—joked about it live on air. He laughed. His guests laughed. Then they moved on. Cornett couldn’t.

Dad Justin Cornett watched his daughter break down while McAfee’s show kept airing

Cornett’s father, Justin, isn’t pulling punches. He posted on X, “It’s been heartbreaking watching my angel and baby girl be impacted so profoundly by such a deceitful lie amplified by media personalities who are out over their skis with zero journalistic integrity and even less empathy.”
He told The Athletic, “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.”
He’s hired a private investigator. He’s contacted local police, campus security, and the FBI. He’s watching his daughter crumble under something she never signed up for. “She wasn’t looking for this attention… This story is such a tragedy and could happen to anyone at anytime.”

The fallout has been violent, public, and constant, but Cornett won’t stop till she sees the end to this

Within 24 hours of McAfee’s segment, Cornett had campus cops at her dorm. Her name was off her door. Still, people slipped vile notes underneath. She was moved to emergency housing.
Houston police showed up, guns drawn, at her mother’s home due to a swatting call. Her phone number was doxxed. Men called and left messages, laughing, calling her a “whore” and telling her to kill herself. Others offered their sons. Her 89-year-old grandfather got a call in the middle of the night—someone taunting him about his granddaughter.
Cornett now does all classes online. She doesn’t eat. She doesn’t sleep. She rarely goes out. When she does, it’s with sunglasses and a hat. “I (can’t) even walk on campus without people taking pictures of me or screaming my name or saying super vulgar, disgusting things to me,” she said.
Cornett says she wants accountability. She’s retained legal counsel. Her attorney, Monica Uddin, says they’re exploring action not just against McAfee and ESPN, but also those who tried to profit off the meme coin tied to her name.
“This is just a Wild West version of a very familiar problem,” Uddin said. “They elevated a lie from the worst corners of (X) to millions of general sports fans just to get a few more clicks and ultimately a few more dollars… The lie is chained to Mary Kate for the rest of her life.”
Cornett has already filed a police report. Her statement on Instagram and GoFundMe called the story “false,” “inexcusable,” and “disturbing.”
“You’re ruining my life by talking about it on your show for nothing but attention,” she told The Athletic, “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.”

Pat McAfee’s ESPN controversies finally crossed a line that destroyed someone’s life forever

This isn’t the first time McAfee’s jokes landed poorly. He called Caitlin Clark a “White bitch,” apologized later. He joked about Larry Nassar. Gave Aaron Rodgers a platform to falsely link Jimmy Kimmel to Jeffrey Epstein. Always quick to apologize after.
But McAfee doesn’t get to apologize this away. This joke wasn’t about a public figure—it was about Mary Kate Cornett, an 18-year-old college student. Not a celebrity, not an athlete, just a kid who was minding her own business.
Cornett doesn’t know if she’ll get hired after this. Wonders if future kids will read this garbage online someday. Her grandfather got harassed, her mom had cops at her door, her phone is unusable.
Justin Cornett summed it up perfectly:
“These folks…they can just say whatever they want and destroy a young girl’s life forever. You have to know the impact of what you might be saying and how it might affect them. And to not consider that is ignorant and naive at best, and malicious and deceitful and hurtful at worst. No one’s safe from this sort of attack. It could happen to you, it could happen to someone you love.”
McAfee calls himself a “sappy softy” dad in the same show he wrecked Cornett’s life. Now he might have to explain that to his own daughter one day.
Read more: Pat McAfee and ESPN accused of spreading false scandal that ‘destroyed’ an 18-year-old Ole Miss student’s