How the rightwing sports bro conquered America

By extension of the Trump-aligned manosphere', figures such as ESPN's Pat McAfee have upended US culture with their brash, hypermasculine punditry

This February, Pat McAfee was broadcasting live on ESPN, the most watched sports network in the US, when he aired a salacious rumor about the sex life of a teenage college student. Once a workaday punter with the Indianapolis Colts, McAfee is now the most influential pundit in American sports with an eponymous ESPN show, who has more than 11m followers across YouTube, X, Instagram and TikTok.

To howls of merriment from his panel, McAfee spelled out the rumor centered on a 19-year-old female student at Ole Miss, a public university in Mississippi, as it was being reported by everybody on the internet": that the student had sex with her boyfriend's father. Ole Miss dads are slinging meat right now!" roared Boston" Connor Campbell, one of McAfee's sidekicks.