Former NFL Star Shannon Sharpe Says Sex Audio was Real – But Not a Response to Gay Rumors

Shannon Sharpe, a star former football player, has been the subject of gay rumors for years. But will audio that inadvertently ended up on his Instagram live dispel or entrench those speculations?

"On Wednesday night [Sept. 11], the NFL Hall of Famer and current ESPN presenter shocked his 3.2 million Instagram followers by apparently going live in the middle of a sexual encounter with a woman," Entertainment Weekly recounted.

"The broadcast, which ended after nearly two full minutes, was followed by a now-deleted X (formerly Twitter) statement from Sharpe, claiming that his account had been 'hacked,'" EW said.

Sharpe quickly reversed course on that claim, however, saying that the audio had "accidentally gone live after tossing his phone onto the bed before engaging in the private encounter that, he says, unfortunately, went public," The Hollywood Reporter relayed.

Describing himself as "embarrassed" on what EW called "an emergency episode of his Nightcap podcast," Sharpe told his listeners – as well as his co-host and another NFL legend, Chad Ochocinco Johnson – that he was "extremely, extremely private," and added, "to have one of your most intimate details – the audio – heard for the entire world to hear, I'm embarrassed for a number of reasons."

None of which, evidently, have to do with persistent speculation about whether the former player might be gay.

"Sharpe, Johnson, and apparently comedian Kat Williams (who had called Sharpe minutes before), all had fun with the episode," LGBTQ+ athletics site Outsports detailed, "throwing in a dose of gay rumors and homophobia for good measure."

"You ain't gay today," Outsports quoted Williams saying on the podcast.

"In fact, some people wondered if Sharpe had staged the entire thing purposefully, so people would hear him having sex with a woman to throw off the gay rumors," Outsports noted.

But the NFL Hall of Famer was insistent that the whole thing was just an accident – an inexplicable one, but still.

"I've never turned IG Live on," Sharpe declared, "so I don't know how it works and all of sudden my other phone started going off."

"My phone wasn't hacked," Sharpe reiterated. "It wasn't a prank, it was me being a healthy, active male."

Johnson seemed happy to hear it. As Outsports detailed, Johnson brought up the gay rumors, saying, "You remember all the people talking trash and saying whatever they had to say, trying to assassinate your character, that you might be this, you might be this, so hell, it was a Michelle, not a Michael."

When Johnson was finished speaking, Sharpe said with a laugh, "There's never been a Michael."

Jason Whitlock, host of "Fearless with Jason Whitlock," noted the gay rumors and acknowledged the thought that the supposed leak might have been a deliberate tactic to deflect the rumors, but he also proposed a different theory, UK newspaper the Daily Mail detailed.

"'He's a master at baiting,' Whitlock said," the Mail recounted. "Late night, he goes on Nightcap and confesses and reels in 185, 190, 200 thousand live viewers over YouTube - that's a massive number."

"And so people have instantly gone to [say]: 'Was this leaked intentionally for publicity?' Was this leaked intentionally to fight the rumors that Shannon Sharpe is gay? Those rumors have been around for quite some time," Whitlock said, according to the Mail.

The commentator, whose show belongs to the right-wing Blaze Media, then posited that public discourse has become dominated by a constant free-for-all, driven by Hollywood and other entertainment industries, that has been "rigged in a way that promotes sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, transgenderism, just sexual fluidity," the Mail relayed.

"If you wanna be part of the club, you have to join the sex cult that's driving the club," Whitlock went on to say, "that's giving out the multimillion contracts."

Watch Sharpe discuss the incident below.