Over the weekend, the Indiana Fever fired coach Stephanie White after a 4-4 start to the season and viral tough coaching moment with superstar guard Caitlin Clark and hired Iowa’s Jan Jensen to replace her… in fantasy land.
In reality, White was in no trouble of losing her job. There was no plan to bring in Jensen from Iowa. A parody social media account claiming to provide “Fever updates” shared a couple of made-up posts that tricked Fox Sports sports broadcasting heavyweight Skip Bayless into providing commentary on a series of false Fever events.
Using similar graphics to the ones used in big ESPN sports updates from trusted insiders like Adam Schefter and Shams Charania, these accounts pull the wool over a quick scroller to make them believe breaking sports nonsense. Just look at this one from “@FeverUpdate” “breaking” that Jensen was expected to take over for the Fever. The “breaking” graphic that Charania often uses to share big NBA news gets replicated; the untrained eye takes it as fact and rolls with it without much thought on the source. Even a sports media bigwig like Bayless can fall for it.
The Indiana Fever are expected to name Jan Jensen as their next head coach amid growing speculation surrounding Stephanie White’s future with the franchise following recent tensions spreading online involving Caitlin Clark.
Jensen would remain as Iowa’s head coach while… pic.twitter.com/2ma5H4L1a4
— Fever Updates (@FeverUpdate) May 31, 2026
These fake sports insider accounts have broken contagion.
In an era where an already fragile collective media literacy feels more threatened than ever with the rise of AI and a social media platform like X (Twitter) is relying on community notes to call out garbage, fake sports insiders are sprouting like weeds in a garden and choking out the natural ecosystem. They’re everywhere in all areas of sports; like a virus, they’re mutating new strains of resistance.
Of course, the rise of “fake blue checks” on X has provided real cover for fake accounts. People used to be able to better tell the difference between what’s real and fake; with X allowing anyone to “verify” themselves, it’s become harder and harder to discern reality from parody. Front Office Sports wrote an in-depth piece in 2024 about sports impersonators, highlighting one that still haunts the web today.
Want a fake New York Giants insider? Meet Wesley Steinberg, one of the more infamous fake insider accounts that continues to pull massive pranks on the internet. Steinberg is a classic type of fake sports insider; the headshot shows a serious-looking person in a suit, a subconscious sign of significance and credibility, with a social biography that claims this person is an “NFL and NY Giants Insider.” Next, the parody wink: “AS-MR Sports Representative.” “Steinberg” has been posting fake Giants updates for a while now, including one that went viral on a fake phone call between New York coach John Harbaugh and outside linebacker Abdul Carter over his Jaxson Dart-Trump post.
The days of getting “Chapsed” and falling for “Adarn Schefter” have morphed into viral ruses pulled off by the likes of “Shane Tuttle,” a fake college football reporter, Football Crave, a slippery “NFL updates” account, and, of course, NBA Centel, a fake NBA account that created an entire subculture around its phony basketball “updates.”
More spring up regularly, like “No3 Sports,” a parody of On3 Sports that recently duped people about Nick Saban, and “NFL Drop,” which posted a fake Instagram story from Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts on the Dart-Trump controversy. Fake “news” posts can involve Stranger Things, Abbott Elementary, Survivor, Von Miller, Bad Bunny, Steve Kerr, Kendrick Lamar, Mike Vrabel and Dianna Russini, Jayden Daniels and Pete Crow-Armstrong.
Some people get the joke, but a lot of people do not.
“Tuttle” shared a fake Instagram story from former Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia in April after he went undrafted that alluded to him bad-mouthing the NFL. It spread like wildfire. “Tuttle” recently “reported on” Michael Jordan being in during the North Carolina coaching search; “Football Crave” recently caused a viral controversy with the Minnesota Vikings over a fake practice report. Fake AI postsgo viral on social media all the time now; an account like “Fever Updates” can generate an AI image for satire being sold as the real letter. Even a graphic where the word “suspended” is misspelled can pull of the ruse now. Sometimes, strange outliers emerge, like an entire fake account proclaiming to be Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Emeka Egbuka that even tricked the team.
Just on Thursday, Football Crave shared a false post about quarterback Dillon Gabriel not getting paid for his No. 8 Cleveland Browns jersey upon the addition of outside linebacker Jared Verse. As of publication, that post had 5.3 million impressions on X. It’s true that Gabriel and Verse are doubling up on the No. 8, but the Gabriel quote is false.
It’s a fever that’s hard to break
Post-truth news reporting was always going to be tricky, especially in a fast-moving world like sports. These days, you can amass a following with a snappy profile picture, semi-official sport bio and basic level of graphic design and fool the pants off the public with any fake sports update you want. The results can be quick and widespread. We have enough trouble withfan-made conspiracies; these fake accounts are making that and everything else worse.
Like with Bayless, the Fever literally had to issue rebuttals to the White firing report all because such a lofty sports media figure fell for a satire account. It felt easy to imagine the fake Adam Schefter, Adrian Wojnarowski and Ian Rapoport eventually fading out of style as more and more people trained themselves to check the handle before sharing the report.
However, the jokesters have evolved. Now, you must know who these fake accounts are before you fall for their parodies. “Football Crave” is a particularly successful ruse because of the “Pop Crave” account, a real X account that feeds people real updates. You associate the “brand name” Crave with football, see an update that is at least somewhat credible against the backdrop of reality (arguably) and, because social media trains us to act fast, share the post without thinking. Not everyone has an in-depth knowledge of viable sports reporters; if you see the smiling face in the suit and the graphic seems legit, even the smartest minds can fall victim to believing.
A social media account like “Rickey Scoops,” an anonymous NFL insider with a dog profile pic who has a striking track record of getting real insider updates, makes all of this more confusing. In an age where real information can spring from the most unexpected places, who do you believe? In the case of fake insiders, there is usually a tell to get around social media’s misinformation policies. They’re giving you the tell somewhere; you just have to find it. More often than not, the satire gets taken as fact and the legend gets “printed” haphazardly across the internet.
These accounts are functioning as online trolls, as is their posting right. They’ve just gotten very good at it.
These days, you just have to keep your head on a constant swivel with what you believe when it comes to sports media. These fake insiders aren’t going anywhere; if anything, it seems to be getting worse. If Bayless, one of the top-paid sports broadcasters in the world, can fall for fake information from a fake insider, imagine who else can and does on a regular basis. Maybe you have; we all have from time to time… “insider scoops” at the reader’s expense; “Steinberg” and “Tuttle” get the last laughs.
Staying vigilant and being thorough with what you believe and share in the years to come will become even more important. AI will get stronger; social media will likely continue to slide in policing what’s real and what’s false. Community notes can only help you so much. So much of this, unfortunately, is up to us, in discerning what’s real and what’s fake and in making sure our neighbors know the difference. Honestly, this ecosystem makes you long for the simple tomfoolery of “Uncle Chaps.” We’re probably never going back.
A personal story for the road
Recently, I got an angry reader email about excluding the “fact” of Fernando Mendoza “kissing” a sports reporter after an animated postgame. I was flummoxed as to exactly what this person was talking about until I did a deep dive on the web to see if I had either missed a gigantic sports story in the writing or something else was afoot. Sure enough, an AI-generated video of Mendoza kissing a reporter after the real-life interview had spread and convinced this reader to email me about it. If you don’t think this stuff is spreading, it is, and it’s not getting better. For that reader’s sake and for us all, I hope this all subsides one day.
The better AI gets and the sharper the fake suits on the sports insiders, I’m a bit concerned we’re only going to get worse. Even a fake sports insider account would probably agree to that.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Why fake sports insider accounts are tricking people like Skip Bayless
