You know what\’s absolutely wild? A college quarterback\’s entire future just got nuked by screenshots of Venmo transactions from THREE YEARS AGO. I\’m not even kidding.

John Mateer, the new starting QB for Oklahoma, is currently getting roasted online because some genius found his old Venmo account and discovered payments labeled \”sports gambling UCLA vs USC\” and \”sports gambling.\” Now the internet is losing its collective mind thinking this kid was betting on games as a freshman at Washington State.

Here\’s the kicker though. These could have literally been joke labels for splitting a pizza with his buddies. You know how college kids are with Venmo descriptions. Half of them are inside jokes that make zero sense to anyone else. But does that matter? Absolutely not.

The NCAA has a strict no-gambling policy for athletes, so even the appearance of betting can torch your career faster than you can say \”transfer portal.\” And that\’s exactly what\’s happening here. Screenshots are flying around Twitter like wildfire, people are calling for investigations, and this kid\’s NFL dreams might be over before his senior season even starts.

The worst part? Mateer told his team he never gambled. His teammates probably believe him. His coaches might believe him. But the court of public opinion doesn\’t care about your explanations when they\’ve got screenshots and pitchforks ready.

Think about how insane this is for a second. A 22-year-old athlete can have his entire career destroyed by Venmo transactions from when he was 18. Not actual gambling. Not breaking any real rules. Just suspicious-looking payment descriptions that could mean literally anything.

This is the new reality for every college and professional athlete. Your digital footprint isn\’t just following you, it\’s hunting you down with a magnifying glass. Every tweet from high school, every Instagram story, every Venmo payment with a dumb joke as the description is potential ammunition for people who want to see you fail.

Your grocery receipts could be evidence of steroid purchases. Your Netflix history could show you\’re watching gambling documentaries. Your mom\’s Facebook post about being proud could be interpreted as knowing about improper benefits. It\’s absolutely bonkers.

And here\’s what makes it even more frustrating. The alleged Venmo account? It got deleted. Now whether that\’s because it was fake all along or because Mateer\’s people went into damage control mode, we\’ll probably never know. But deleting it just makes everything look worse.

Three-year-old Venmo jokes are about to end this kid\’s career. Let that sink in.

Every college athlete reading this should probably go scrub their social media right now. Delete those weird Venmo descriptions. Clean up those old tweets. Because in today\’s world, one screenshot can turn you from starting quarterback to public enemy number one overnight.

The internet doesn\’t care about context. It doesn\’t care about explanations. It definitely doesn\’t care about the difference between a joke and reality. All it cares about is having something to be outraged about, and John Mateer just became the perfect target.

Whether these gambling allegations are real or completely made up doesn\’t even matter anymore. The damage is done. This is what happens when your entire life is under a microscope and every single thing you do can be twisted into evidence against you.

Welcome to 2025, where your freshman year Venmo account can torpedo your senior season dreams.

Check out our full breakdown of this insane story and what it means for college athletics in our latest video.