Bad Bunny targeted by fake NFL coach, player quotes
- Published on October 8, 2025 at 20:42
- 4 min read
- By Mia DOUGLAS, AFP North America
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"BREAKING NEWS: Houston Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans has ERUPTED over the NFL's decision to select Bad Bunny for the Super Bowl halftime show," says a September 30, 2025 Facebook post.
The post, from an apparent fan page for the American football franchise, claims Ryans said: "Bad Bunny is a Spanish-singing puppet of the Left, and the league has just declared war on America!"
The post links to an article headlined: "DeMeco Ryans Blasts NFL Over Super Bowl Halftime Choice: 'The League Has Declared War on America.'"
Additional Facebook posts claimed Ryans was furious over the NFL's September 28 announcement that Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, would perform the Super Bowl halftime show on February 8, 2026.
The artist previously joined Shakira on stage as a guest performance during the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show, which the Colombian singer headlined alongside Jennifer Lopez.
Bad Bunny had said he planned to avoid playing shows in the United States during his "Debi Tirar Mas Fotos" world tour -- outside of a residency in US territory Puerto Rico -- over concerns about possible immigration enforcement actions outside the venues.
Trump administration official Corey Lewandowski has warned that US authorities could conduct immigration sweeps at the Super Bowl.
Some "Make America Great Again" influencers have criticized the NFL for the selection -- made with rapper Jay-Z's Roc Nation through a partnership with the league -- of an act that principally performs in Spanish. The singer jokingly clapped back during an October 4, 2025 appearance on Saturday Night Live.
But despite the backlash, there is no evidence that Ryans responded to the decision by calling the rapper a "puppet of the left."
"This is a fake story and not true," Omar Majzoub, senior director of communications for the Texans, told AFP in an October 6 email, calling the Facebook page a "parody account."
Fake quote
Keyword searches on Facebook surfaced posts that attributed identical quotes about Bad Bunny to other big-name NFL figures, including Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye and Los Angeles Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh.
One post crediting the quote to Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert received more than 16,000 interactions.
Other posts linked the same reaction to college American football coaches, including University of Alabama legend Nick Saban, University of Texas coach Steve Sarkisian and Pennsylvania State University's James Franklin.
No credible reports show the men have given this statement.
The posts appear to be part of a larger trend of false reports implicating players and coaches in negative commentary regarding the NFL's halftime show.
One post -- debunked by the US fact-checking organization Lead Stories -- falsely claimed Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott threatened to pull his team from the Super Bowl if Bad Bunny performs. The Bills on October 5 played just their fifth game in the 18-week season, with the playoff picture far from decided.
A different page shared an identical threat attributed to San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan.
Suspicious websites
Several elements about the websites hosting these claims raise red flags, including:
- The articles lack bylines.
- The articles include many quotes without attribution.
- The text font is riddled with character irregularities, with the letter n replaced by the Cyrillic script п and the letter u supplanted by the Greek character υ.
- The website does not allow users to copy text from its pages.
Searches using the domain-registration website Whois also revealed the domains are registered outside the United States (archived here).
The administrators for several of the Facebook pages sharing the articles, meanwhile, are located in Southeast Asia. The page pushing the claim about Ryans is managed from Vietnam and Indonesia, according to Meta page transparency information.
AFP has previously reported on other fake fan pages with administrators in Vietnam.
Meta policy says "creators, publishers and third-party providers sharing clickbait or sensationalism may be ineligible or lose their eligibility to monetize."
However, the platform's monetization program has been shown to incentivize people around the world to create low-quality content in hopes of attracting engagement from American audiences.
Find more reporting on misinformation spreading via clickbait here.
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