Former NFL tight end Shannon Sharpe made a career out of catching passes.
But Sharpe is catching a lot of self-inflicted flack for a damaging, and embarrassing, sex tape.
On Wednesday afternoon, Sharpe shared with his roughly 3.2 million Instagrame followers live audio of himself engaged in sexual activity with a woman.
At the time, Sharpe claimed his Instragram was “hacked.”
However, today, Sharpe came clean about the incident and said he account was not hacked after all.
According to the New York Post, the Pro Football Hall of Famer and ESPN personality admitted that his Instagram was not hacked and that it was in fact himself and a woman engaged in a sexual activity that he had accidentally broadcast to his millions of followers.
“Obviously I am embarrassed. Someone that is extremely, extremely private and to have one of your most intimate details – the audio – heard for the entire world to hear, I’m embarrassed for a number of reasons,” Sharpe initially said during an emergency episode of “Nightcap.”
“There are a lot of people that count on Shannon to be professional at all times and I always try to be professional at all times, even when I’m behind closed doors. … I’m very disappointed in myself, not for the act. I think there are millions and billions of people of consenting age that engage in activities, but for the audio to be heard I’m disappointed in myself. I let a lot of people down.”
According to the report, Sharpe initially claimed his Instagram account had been hacked in a post on X before he deleted the post and admitted Wednesday night that the event occurred because of his lack of technological knowledge.
“I threw my phone on the bed, engaged in an activity,” Sharpe said. “I did not know IG live. I’ve never turned IG live on so I don’t know how it works and all of sudden my other phone started going off.”
It was Sharpe’s marketing partner Jamie Fritz who was finally able to get through to alert him of the situation and it was another person who eventually ended the live video, he explained on the show.
Check out Sharpe’s full admission to the scandal: