Imagine for a second that you are a college football player. You’re in a room with your inner circle, and your phone is on the table. Never in your life have you wanted that phone to ring so badly. The minutes turn into hours, and the hours into days, and yet it has remained silent. Finally, after what feels like an eternity, the phone rings.

You think you’re being drafted. This is the best moment of your life. Only it isn’t—not yet. You were pranked by someone claiming to be the GM of an NFL team, who then recorded it and uploaded the video online. This scenario is not hypothetical; it is what happened to former Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders before he was eventually drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the fifth round of the 2025 NFL Draft.

Sanders was not the only pranked prospect. Number three overall pick Abdul Carter and six other prospects were pranked, as was Philadelphia Eagles defensive back Cooper DeJean during last year’s draft. The story picked up steam with Sanders because of his rapid fall from potential first round pick to fifth rounder and who it was that executed the prank: Jax Ulbrich, son of Atlanta Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich.

Ulbrich has since been fined by the Falcons, but this incident is a reminder of the cruelty that people are capable of in search of virality and the very real concern that the NFL now has with player privacy.

Playing With Dreams

During the first round of the NFL Draft, it’s easy to get lost in the analysis and lose sight of the emotion that is on display with all the players that are being selected. For every player, it’s the most important night of their lives. They are surrounded by the people that helped them get to where they are, moments from realizing their dreams.

But at the same time, it’s a time filled with anxiety, waiting for that phone to ring. Players drafted by NFL teams are quite literally the cream of the crop in football. Over one million high school athletes play competitive 11-man football every year. From that group, roughly 190,000 play Division I college football. Only 250 of those college players are drafted by the NFL, which means that only 0.025% of high school players will ever make it to the pros.

To get to that level, there are sacrifices that need to be made. There are long practice days, physical abuse from a merciless game, and the accommodations made by family and friends to make the dream happen. The draft process is grueling with testing, skill drills, and team interviews. It is the most important evaluation any of these young men have ever had to deal with, and it has so much on the line.

All that pressure is boiled down into a buzz from a smartphone, just hoping that it was all worth it. That all the late nights and early mornings, all the drills and repetition, and the harassment that comes with being a big-time athlete were worth this singular moment. All of it comes to a head with a phone call, the most important minute of communication of their lives.

And yet, for the sake of internet laughs, Jax Ulbrich and others like him ignored all of that to execute a prank. It is an act of cruelty in the context of the moment, a gross demonstration of profiting from another person’s anxiety. This act is a microcosm of modern societies addictive need to go viral in the social media age.

The Need to Go Viral

Internet virality, for many people, has become a sort of golden ticket. A post, article, or meme going viral means a ton of attention and even potential earning opportunities. Look no further than Haliey Welch, or the “Hawk Tuah Girl” as she is more commonly known.

Welch went viral during a “man on the street” style interview where she was asked what makes men go crazy in the bedroom and she responded with the now iconic: “You gotta give 'em that 'hawk tuah' and spit on that thang”.

That one clip has now been seen millions of times across platforms, instantly catapulting Welch into fame. Since then, she has made podcast appearances, started her own podcast, released a dating advice app called Pookie Tools, and even launched a cryptocurrency meme coin called $HAWK token.

The meme coin eventually backfired spectacularly, with Welch and her team being accused of a pump and dump scheme, and she has faded from the public spotlight since then. These opportunities all came from a short 10 second moment in time where Welch said something that people found funny. It, quite literally, changed her life. Welch’s rise to fame is a case study in why so many internet users seek virality, because they desire that sort of instant rise to prominence.

In Welch’s case, everything before the meme coin was relatively harmless. She made the rounds on social media, everyone had a good laugh, and she got a podcast out of it. But there is a fine line in the fun that going viral can provide that can get crossed when it is at the expense of others, such as the YouTuber that mocked unhoused individuals.

The mere notion of virality often tiptoes the line of what is acceptable, which is why we are so fascinated by the content. There is a sort of captivating nature to the content that makes us tune in and share it with others. In the case of Jax Ulbrich, the chase for the viral moment led to a fine and the questioning of his ethics.

It’s not simply that he prank called Shedeur Sanders. But that he did so by seeing Sanders’ phone number on a team-issued iPad and then orchestrated the prank. He saw an opportunity and decided to use the drastic fall of Sanders’ draft stock, to garner some likes and reposts online. It was his search for a viral moment that led to a decision to manipulate the emotions of another human being. This incident has shown us that the NFL may have a problem on its hands when it comes to player confidentiality and privacy in the digital age.

Protecting Player Information

Throughout my working life, I have worked with several third-party marketing agencies that had contracts with mobile phone manufacturers. Whenever there is a new product that is ready to be launched, we had to sign NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) and were given a speech about how important it is to maintain the confidentiality of an unannounced product to preserve our relationship with the client.

It was considered a gift to be able to get hands-on time with new products before general availability. With this privilege came the potential for consequences. We were not allowed to share images or information about the devices on social media, we could not use them in the field until the specified launch date, and even saying the device name was discouraged.

If these rules were violated, it was grounds for immediate termination per the terms of the NDA. It was cut and dry, and if a family member exposed the product before it was time the employee would be fired without hesitation. This happened occasionally, and within the company many would wonder how someone could be so foolish to compromise their job for a few views on a blog post or tweet. It is with this context that I find the carelessness of Jeff Ulbrich so alarming.

Like Ulbrich, I was always issued company devices that had rules around them—not loading personal accounts, robust management software, security protocols, etc. When you work for a company that goes out of their way to let you know how important their proprietary data is, you have a responsibility to respect that data if you value remaining employed.

By being wildly careless with his iPad from the Falcons, Jeff Ulbrich displayed a recklessness that is worthy of the $100,000 fine he was assessed and then some. By being given the contact information of future NFL players, he is in the same situation as I was with an unreleased phone. These players are not yet NFL players, and their contact information needs to be treated with care.

The acts of Jax Ulbrich are getting the most coverage because it is a leak from inside the NFL. But other players have had their numbers obtained as well, which is a byproduct of the intersectionality of fame and modern technology. Potential draft picks often activate prepaid cell phones from carriers like Boost Mobile or Metro by T-Mobile to limit exposure, but it is not enough.

The NFL is a $2.86 billion company. It stands to reason that they could invest in a secure communication tool for its potential draft picks that doesn’t require them to resort to buying burner phones to avoid harassment. In some cases, these pranks are identified early, like in the case of Abdul Carter. But the case of Shedeur Sanders was a perfect storm of an identifiable player amid a historic draft slide who plays the league’s most high-profile position.

Jax Ulbrich should have had more human compassion but instead chose to chase clout and virality. It was an incredibly insensitive moment, and it is maddening that he himself will likely face no consequences. It is an instance that highlights the NFL’s glaring privacy issues with protecting their future players from harassment and further proving the idea that this league has never cared about the well-being of its players. Overall, this is a failure of one young man’s humanity and the proliferation of a league’s ever-present apathy.