The Louisiana Christian Wildcats defeated the Northwestern State Demons, 42-37, at Harry Turpin Stadium on Friday. It was a historic victory for Louisiana Christian, an NAIA program.
“NAIA football is good football,” Louisiana Christian head coach Ben McLaughlin told KALB News Channel 5. “There’s a lot of these kids right here that are frustrated because they feel like they should be on this field full time. They should have gotten recruited by a [NCAA] Division I.”
With all that established, Northwestern State’s loss was obviously newsworthy, so TotalProSports hopped on it. The issue, however, is that TotalProSports misidentified Northwestern State as Northwestern, using the headline, “Big Ten Team Suffered One of The Worst Losses In NCAA Division I Football History Last Night.”
“Someone tell Yahoo that Northwestern State is not in the Big Ten and the FBS has not kicked off yet,” Colby Dant posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday morning. “Northwestern State is in the Southland. Please hire people that know college football.”
Someone tell Yahoo that Northwestern State is not in the Big Ten and the FBS has not kicked off yet.
Northwestern State is in the Southland. Please hire people that know college football. https://t.co/G1QkOQOI9Z pic.twitter.com/arsXdMjqY7
— Colby Dant (@TheColbyD) August 29, 2026
Northwestern State Wildcats? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/uQwjYsLndy
— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) August 29, 2026
This is what happens when you use AI and it thinks Northwestern is Northwestern State pic.twitter.com/PqP3lAYxIQ
— WestCoastCFB (@WestCoastCFB) August 29, 2026
On top of that, TotalProSports’ article was syndicated to Yahoo Sports, so Yahoo was incorrectly blamed for the egregious factual error.
“This is not a Yahoo story, it’s partner content from ‘TotalProSports’ re-posted on Yahoo — but this has always been the downside risk of Yahoo’s partner content model,” wrote Daniel Roberts, editor-in-chief of Front Office Sports.
While the scorn was misplaced, the whole ordeal underscores an existential issue affecting digital media. Aggregation sites are increasingly outsourcing internationally, leading to a staff running into issues without sufficient editing. That’s before speculating whether this article was written with AI.
As of this writing, the TotalProSports article has been removed from Yahoo. TotalProSports also amended its headline on its website, where the article remains live.