Mainstream Media Attempts to Cancel Star Texas QB Arch Manning for His Comments About Female ESPN Reporter
In our worst moments, everyone deserves a little grace.
The worst thing about cancel culture, however, is that it always extends grace to the undeserving while withholding grace from those whose mild transgressions stemmed from no apparent malice and resulted in no actual harm.
For instance, Texas Longhorns star quarterback Arch Manning, nephew of former NFL quarterbacks Peyton and Eli Manning, has come under fire for laughing at an AI-generated video that showed his head coach, Steve Sarkisian, slapping ESPN sideline reporter Holly Rowe across the face following Texas’ comeback victory over the Ohio State Buckeyes Saturday.
According to The Athletic, the controversial laughter occurred while the 22-year-old Manning spoke to reporters Monday.
“I’ve seen a few AI edits,” Manning said in a clip posted to the social media platform X, referring to the phony Sarkisian slap. “That’s about it. I saw an AI edit of Sark’s interview.”
At that point, the reporters laughed.
“Y’all seen that one?” Manning continued. “That’s a good one. Of him slapping Holly Rowe. It’s hilarious.”
“I saw the AI Edit of (Sark) slapping Holly Rowe.”
I asked Arch Manning if he’d seen any edits on TikTok or Twitter after the game, and his answer is gold. pic.twitter.com/70FnNCVEHb
— Evan Vieth (@EvanVieth) September 14, 2026
The “interview” to which Manning referred took place immediately after Texas’ monumental 24-23 victory over the top-ranked Buckeyes. In that game, the Longhorns trailed 23-3 at the end of the third quarter. But 21 unanswered fourth-quarter points propelled Texas to an improbable win.
On the field after the game, Rowe tried to interview Sarkisian. The coach, however, did not allow her to ask a question.
“Let’s go, Texas, fight!” the coach said twice in another clip posted to X. He then added, “Hook ’em!” the program’s signature rallying cry, before walking away. Rowe looked perturbed.
In fairness to Sarkisian, as ESPN’s Laura Rutledge explained earlier in the broadcast, the coach had waited patiently at halftime for the network to deal with its technical issues.
“I do want to make sure we clear something up,” Rutledge said in a second clip posted below. “He did decline the interview at the half. He had waited a long time, been very patient with some technical issues that we had. He apologized to us. We should be apologizing to him, which we did.”
The Steve Sarkisian postgame interview with Holly Rowe was quite brief. https://t.co/TWV6JrA9Ro pic.twitter.com/xo0z8oidMN
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 13, 2026
Then, on Monday evening, an X account named “Hookem,” which boasted slightly more than 2,500 followers as of Tuesday morning, posted the controversial AI-altered clip of Sarkisian giving Rowe a backhanded slap across the face. The clip, as of Tuesday morning, had more than 6.9 million views.
You’re all welcome. Hookem. pic.twitter.com/7sRH9jQpIm
— Hookem 🤘 (@hookem) September 14, 2026
Apparently, Manning and the Texas reporters found that AI-generated clip “hilarious.”
Other female sports reporters on X, however, had very different reactions.
“Imagine Holly Rowe’s face in that despicable AI video was your daughter’s. Your wife’s. Your sister’s. Still funny?” baseball reporter Tricia Whitaker wrote as part of a lengthier post.
Imagine Holly Rowe’s face in that despicable AI video was your daughter’s. Your wife’s. Your sister’s.
Still funny?
This is gross on so many levels. And no, this isn’t people being “too sensitive” or “easily offended.”
Joking about this in a room full of media members and… https://t.co/XPVljaCnhP
— Tricia Whitaker (@TriciaWhitaker) September 15, 2026
Likewise, college football reporter Nicole Auerbach called the male reporters’ laughter “so, so gross.”
the laughter from all the men in the room … so, so gross. https://t.co/A0qWuws1Pq
— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) September 15, 2026
“Can we stop making violence against women the punchline of a joke?” baseball reporter Kylen Mills begged.
Can we stop making violence against women the punchline of a joke? https://t.co/LYGgstUlUO
— Kylen Mills (@KylenMills) September 14, 2026
Finally, author Christine Brennan called the laughter a “revealing and disgusting moment.” She also looked forward to “explanations/apologies.”
A revealing & disgusting moment at Texas: Arch Manning, 22, unable to control his laughter while talking about the AI edit of his coach “slapping Holly Rowe.” And all the laughter in the room accompanying & encouraging him. Will be interesting to hear the explanations/apologies. https://t.co/w6iGeeIfIk
— Christine Brennan (@cbrennansports) September 15, 2026
What, then, should we make of all this?
First, if we extend a little grace to Manning, we might conclude that the young quarterback laughed not at the depiction of violence against women, but at the sheer absurdity of seeing his own coach, with whom he interacts on a daily basis, in a video of that kind. Sarkisian, we must remember, merely blew off an interview. He did not actually slap Rowe. Nor would any sane person find it funny if he had.
Then, if we extend grace to those female sports reporters on X, we might easily understand why they reacted the way they did to a room full of their male colleagues laughing at the fake slap. “Is that how those men feel about me?” they might quietly wonder. Or, they might ask what Rowe did — aside from her job — to deserve such imagined treatment.
As for Sarkisian, halftime technical glitches or not, he might have shown Rowe some grace. He was emotional in that moment of triumph, yes, but he was also self-absorbed.
What about the creators of that distasteful video? Do they deserve grace? From a certain perspective, yes, they do. Namely, if they produced the video not to glorify or even trivialize violence against women but from sheer exhaustion over what they perceived as disproportionate outrage against Sarkisian, then we can certainly understand their perspective.
Would that make the video funnier or more tasteful? No. But it would explain why they made it. It would mean that, by absurd exaggeration, they made the otherwise innocent Rowe an unfortunate proxy for the insufferable online mob and its anger toward the coach.
After all — and here is the heart of the matter — anyone who expressed outrage over a video depicting phony violence while at the same time extending empathy toward (or even lionizing) perpetrators of actual violence, alleged or otherwise, has lost his or her way.
We might remember, for instance, how certain people rallied around “Maryland Man” Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the illegal immigrant whose wife, according to the Department of Homeland Security, “petitioned for an order of protection against him.”
“She claimed he punched her, scratched her, and ripped off her shirt, and bruised her,” per DHS.
In that context, of course, Sarkisian’s behavior and Manning’s laughter barely register on the transgression meter.
Thus, without excusing every objectionable aspect of this incident, we might conclude by encouraging a generous helping of grace, both from and toward everyone involved.
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