Скачать или смотреть The Fake Recruit that Broke the Internet and Exposed Bad Journalism

In the late 1990s, before Twitter, before recruiting stars, and before fact-checking went digital, the internet was the Wild West of college football.

That’s where Montego Powers was born — a completely fictitious defensive end dreamed up by Steve Patterson (me), founder of UGASports.com, to test whether rival recruiting sites were stealing his content.

Montego was a monster on paper:
6'4", 270 pounds, 4.6 in the forty, from the mythical Garden City High School in Augusta, Georgia.

Within days, other sites listed him as one of Georgia’s top prospects. Fans debated his talent. Reporters mentioned his name. The hoax had worked — too well.

Years later, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution broke the story:

“We made him out to be an animal. He was a great tackler and very aggressive. He just wasn’t real.” — Steve Patterson

The Montego Powers Experiment became legend among early internet insiders — a cautionary tale about truth, verification, and how fast a lie can travel online.

In this video, Steve Patterson revisits the full story — how the hoax unfolded, who was involved on The Dawgvent, and what it revealed about the birth of digital journalism and recruiting culture.

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