Tips, predictions and best bets for the second week of the NFL
USA TODAY Sports’ Lorenzo Reyes is back with his best NFL picks for Week 2 of the NFL season.
After initially claiming he had been hacked, Football Hall of Fame member Shannon Sharpe admitted on Wednesday that he accidentally streamed audio recordings of himself having sex live to his approximately 3.2 million followers on Instagram.
In an emergency episode of the podcast “Nightcap,” which he co-hosts with former NFL colleague Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson, the longtime Denver Broncos tight end apologized for his mistake.
“Of course I’m embarrassed. I’m embarrassed for a number of reasons when someone whose private life is extremely private makes one of their most intimate details – the audio recording – available to the whole world,” Sharpe said.
“A lot of people rely on Shannon to always behave professionally, and I always try to behave professionally, even when I’m behind closed doors.”
The incident went viral after thousands of people started commenting and reposting the link to Sharpe’s Instagram account. He later deleted the post, which he attributed to his lack of technical knowledge.
“I threw my phone on the bed and was busy doing some activity,” he said. “I didn’t know about IG Live. I’ve never turned on IG Live before, so I don’t know how it works, and suddenly my other phone started ringing.”
Sharpe won three Super Bowls during his 14-year career, two with the Broncos (after the 1997 and 1998 seasons) and one with the Baltimore Ravens (2000). One of the most dominant tight ends in NFL history, Sharpe was selected to the All-Pro first team four times and was a member of the league’s All-Decade Team in the 1990s.
After retiring from sports, Sharpe was a fixture in sports media – most notably in his confrontations with Skip Bayless on FS1’s “Undisputed” until he left the show last summer.
Since then, in addition to his podcast with Ochocino, he has also been an ESPN contributor.
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