{"id":850779,"date":"2026-09-17T08:58:26","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/850779\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T08:58:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:58:26","slug":"arch-mannings-ai-video-comments-are-no-laughing-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/850779\/","title":{"rendered":"Arch Manning\u2019s AI video comments are no laughing matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday night, after the Texas Longhorns stormed back to score 21 unanswered fourth-quarter points to beat the top-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes, 24-23, ESPN\u2019s Holly Rowe attempted to get a standard postgame interview with Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian on the field. But instead of speaking with her, Sarkisian yelled into the mic, flashed the \u201chook \u2018em horns\u201d sign and stormed off, leaving Rowe looking understandably perplexed and frustrated.<\/p>\n

Sarkisian snubbing Rowe, who is universally respected in the industry, was enough by itself to spark a conversation about disrespect toward women sports journalists. But then came an artificial intelligence-generated video of Sarkisian not snubbing Rowe but slapping her so hard she hit the ground. At Monday\u2019s media availability, when Texas quarterback Arch Manning was asked if he had seen any of the AI edits, he responded excitedly: \u201cThat\u2019s a good one. Of him slapping Holly Rowe? That\u2019s hilarious.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Monday\u2019s media availability, when Texas quarterback Arch Manning was asked if he had seen any of the AI edits, he responded excitedly: \u201cThat\u2019s a good one. Of him slapping Holly Rowe? That\u2019s hilarious.\u201d<\/p>\n

The room, mostly full of men reporters and football admins, appeared to laugh along with Manning. Fans and commentators responded almost immediately with understandable anger that a star quarterback and a group of ostensibly professional men thought the image of a woman being slapped simply for doing her job was, to use Manning\u2019s word, \u201chilarious.\u201d On Tuesday, Manning issued an apology on Instagram.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my press conference yesterday, I made an insensitive comment about an AI video,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThere is nothing funny about it. It\u2019s easy to say I didn\u2019t mean it, but I know my words and actions were hurtful to a lot of people. I do not take that lightly and am deeply sorry for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He apologized specifically \u201cto Holly Rowe for what she has personally had to deal with because of my comments,\u201d writing, \u201cI have a ton of respect for her and appreciate her showing me grace in this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

To her credit, Rowe graciously accepted<\/a>. She\u2019s been in this industry long enough to have the thick skin every woman in sports needs to survive.<\/p>\n

I worked with Rowe at ESPN, and I know her well enough to know she doesn\u2019t need me, or anyone else, defending her. But the AI video and a room of men laughing about it is the latest in a string of events in which many men have shown themselves all too comfortable with misogyny, including outright depictions of violence against women.<\/p>\n

Last month, an ad promoting a collaboration between Good Good Golf and Callaway<\/a> on Callaway\u2019s Quantum Driver showed Garrett Clark, a co-founder of Good Good Golf, pushing golfer Alexis Miestowski to the ground when she reaches for a club, standing over her and saying, \u201cDo not touch my new driver.\u201d Clark later apologized, calling it \u201cthe worst ad known to man<\/a>.\u201d Callaway cut ties with Good Good Golf<\/a> and pledged $1 million to organizations that work to prevent violence against women. Multiple retailers reported removing Good Good Golf\u2019s items<\/a> from its shelves. Also last month, a male fan at a WNBA game in Los Angeles attempted to revive last season\u2019s despicable trend of throwing sex toys on the court<\/a> during games.<\/p>\n

Taken together, it seems that the most juvenile among us have taken over the discourse.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPlay<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Predictably, those of us who find fault with this misogynistic behavior are being accused of having no sense of humor, of not understanding comedy. But what is the comedy in a football coach slapping a woman reporter doing her job? What\u2019s the punchline in a woman being violently stopped from touching a man\u2019s driver? What are we to find funny about dildos being tossed on a court where women are playing basketball?<\/p>\n

\tMore articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tKavitha A. Davidson\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tKavitha A. Davidson is an Emmy-winning sports journalist from New York. She was most recently a correspondent on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.” She was previously a reporter and columnist at ESPN, The Athletic, and Bloomberg.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saturday night, after the Texas Longhorns stormed back to score 21 unanswered fourth-quarter points to beat the top-ranked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-850779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}