AI Fakes And Facebook The Alabama Football Deception
Remember when the wildest stories were confined to grocery store tabloids? Bigfoot sightings, UFOs, even Bigfoot on UFOs with Elvis – the classic brain rot. Now, that kind of sensationalism has found a new home in your pocket, and figures like Nick Saban, Jalen Hurts, and Kalen DeBoer are the unwitting stars of these viral, baseless tales.
These outrageously false Facebook posts, often powered by Artificial Intelligence, have unfortunately become a common sight, manipulating social media algorithms. They tend to fool the same audience once captivated by chain emails promising to save the world. While many of these posts are laughable and mostly harmless, their widespread circulation highlights a troubling decline in our collective ability to discern reality from fiction and a significant lack of news literacy that extends far beyond sports.
Spotting The Fakes Saban Babies And Giant Recruits
If you spend any time on Facebook, you've likely encountered these fabrications. We're talking about stories like Saban adopting an abandoned baby, an imaginary 8.5-foot-tall No. 1 recruit committing to Alabama, or star receiver Ryan Williams supposedly turning down a $200 million NIL offer from Texas. These posts often feature a gallery of the most outlandish AI-generated photos that should immediately trigger skepticism. Yet, they can generate hundreds or thousands of interactions and comments.
This phenomenon isn't limited to Alabama football. Pages dedicated to various teams, sports, and general interests have emerged, appearing to be part of a network of foreign-based operations.
Who Is Behind These Fake Football Pages
Take the page "ROLL TIDE Football" as an example. Launched last fall, it boasts over 8,000 followers. Its listed address points to the Gulf State Park Pavilion in Gulf Shores, a clear misdirection. Similarly, "Bama Pride Hub," with nearly 5,000 followers, lists an address that's actually the Stockyard Grill restaurant in Montgomery.
A deeper dive into their required page disclosures reveals that the administrators aren't even based in the United States. "ROLL TIDE Football’s" page manager is located in Nigeria. "Bama Pride Hub" has managers in Vietnam and Australia. Other pages like "Bama Legion Rising" (7,100 followers) and "Touchdown Trib" (6,500 followers) are also managed from Vietnam, with some administrators in the Philippines. Notably, several of these pages were created within days of each other in October and November of 2024.
Another example of the obviously fake photos of Nick Saban generated by AI that's appearing on Facebook groups. (Source: Facebook)
The Motivation Money Engagement And More
These pages frequently share the same bogus stories with a clear intention: to drive engagement (likes, hearts, comments). This engagement helps them earn income directly from Facebook and boosts their standing within the social network’s algorithm, leading to more visibility and perpetuating the cycle.
While many are simply harmless lies designed to spark conversation, some delve into more manipulative territory. For instance, "ROLL TIDE Football" posted in May 2025 claiming Kalen DeBoer “appointed” former Alabama star AJ McCarron as the Crimson Tide’s new QB coach. Accompanied by an AI-generated photo of the two, the post garnered 6,200 likes and hearts, 672 comments, and nearly 500 shares by mid-June. Other posts are crafted to feed into political divisions, such as one falsely claiming Jalen Hurts refused to celebrate Pride Month while renouncing “woke” ideas, which received 3,500 interactions.
The motives are less ideological and more economical. The websites linked in these posts are typically covered in ads, drawing additional revenue for the operators. The rabbit hole can go deeper. The listed website for "ROLL TIDE Football" is registered in Reykjavik, Iceland, and its associated telephone number has been linked to phishing schemes and other fraudulent activities, according to reports from the Better Business Bureau and even U.S. federal agencies.
When Fake News Spills Into The Real World
These false stories have even managed to trickle into real-life situations. A caller to the Kalen DeBoer radio show in November was fooled by a Facebook post claiming the coach’s wife was pregnant with their third child. DeBoer handled it with good humor, acknowledging it wasn't the first he'd heard of the made-up headline. “The only reason I know is because I’ve got a lot of text messages saying congratulations,” DeBoer said on the show.
Despite this, the storyline persisted on Facebook. "Bama Pride Hub" posted the same false story again in April, continuing to garner interactions.
Facebooks Role In The Spread Of Misinformation
This raises a critical question: Why does Facebook allow these outrageous lies on its platform? Its parent company, Meta, announced in January that it had eliminated third-party fact-checkers, aiming to end “censorship.” Instead, it plans to add a crowd-sourced community note feature, similar to X (formerly Twitter), which remains in testing.
Meta also has policies regarding AI-generated content, stating it “requires you to label content you share that has photorealistic video or realistic-sounding audio that has been digitally generated or altered, including with AI,” according to its website. This is clearly not being enforced. The policy also claims the site can detect AI-generated content and would add labels when found, which is also evidently not happening.
AL.com requested comment from Meta regarding these AI-generated posts but received no response before their story's publication. A Meta spokesperson previously told NPR in May 2024 for a similar story: “We work to reduce the spread of content that is spammy or sensational because we want users to have a good experience, which is why we offer them controls to what they see in their feed.” Yet, the fake AI content output continues and has only compounded since then.
The Proliferation Continues In Facebook Groups
Beyond pages, Facebook groups also contribute to this universe of misinformation. One group named simply “Alabama football” has over 145,000 members. None of its 16 administrators or managers appear to have legitimate profiles, yet they share some of the same nonsensical fake stories. An admin named “Alabama Beautiful” shares a mix of lifted photos and laughably false stories, such as quarterback Ty Simpson donating $450,000 to the program (with a photo of a different player) or Alabama unveiling a Saban statue that has been standing since 2011. Another repeated post claimed Mark Ingram was returning to the program with a photo of a current player who looks nothing like him. The examples are countless.
Attempts by AL.com to reach these accounts and pages were unsuccessful, with messages going unanswered or emails bouncing back.
User Reactions And The Enduring Cycle
Not everyone is fooled, and there's growing pushback within the comments of these posts. Even Meta AI summaries of comments sometimes acknowledge the skepticism. “Commenters are skeptical about the post’s validity,” reads one summary below clearly fake photos of a sorrowful Hurts with an ailing Saban in a hospital bed, “citing inconsistencies in the photo... Many believe it’s AI-generated.” Still, over 1,300 users interacted positively with that post. And so, the cycle continues.
Why This Harmless Fun Is A Serious Problem
While we're often talking about largely frivolous subject matters and seemingly harmless lies, this situation exposes a serious potential to deceive a captive audience that isn't always equipped to spot even the most obvious fabrications. It erodes user confidence in legitimate news on the platform when credible information is forced to coexist with clickbait scams operating with no effective oversight from Facebook.
Bigfoot is back. This time, he’s riding the Loch Ness Monster, waving to Elvis, and all it took was an internet connection in Vietnam.
Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.
