Rich Ohrnberger isn’t the only person who wonders if Jackson Mahomes and Brittany Matthews are in the spotlight a little too much. The brother and fiancee of Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes seem to always find a way to put themselves in the spotlight and invite significant criticism in the process.
The former NFL lineman and current XTRA 1360 morning man tweeted last week that he had been told that Patrick Mahomes had asked his fiancee and brother not to come to his games anymore. According to Ohrnberger’s source, Mahomes believes they “have become a distraction.”
It didn’t take long for the former MVP himself to refute that story.
Mike Harmon was filling in for Jason Smith on FOX Sports Radio on Friday. He welcomed Rich Ohrnberger to the show. Ohrnberger admitted that he was duped and apologized for spreading a false story.
“This was an interesting situation because I thought I was having a text message conversation with someone who I trust deeply, with someone who I respect in this business deeply,” Ohrnberger told Harmon. “Someone who I’ve reached out to for advice from in the past, interview requests from in the past, and the context was accurate. The language was accurate in terms of this person comporting themselves as somebody who they were alluding to be and they weren’t.”
Matt Verderame of Fansided noticed a tweet from Mike Florio saying that someone had tried to give him the same story. That is when Verderame explained that reporters around the league had received this same tip. It was the first time Ohrnberger was alerted to the fact that it may have been false.
Mike Harmon pointed out how easy it was to fall for this “tip.” It is a story that sounded plausible based on public knowledge of the people involved.
“Part of it, was we wanted the subject matter to be true in this instance,” he told Rich Ohrnberger. “It honestly has happened to every baseball insider, basketball reporter and any journalist, it seems, because it’s so easy for people to fake who they are online.”
