Paige Spiranac admits cheating at Internet Invitational but is not the bad guy

The biggest sports scandal of 2025 has been addressed by one of the alleged offenders.

Yes, we are obviously exaggerating, but the Barstool Sports $1 million Internet Invitational was a golf event that the PGA Tour or LIV Golf could only dream of as far as buzz on social media, especially for a non major. Dave Portnoy's genius conceit turned reality became a monster success, and the Barstool founder and owner put his literal money where his mouth is by fronting his own cash for the prize purse.

Paige Spiranac at the Happy Gilmore 2 premiere at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City on July 21, 2025. | IMAGO / MediaPunch

(As of this posting, the final episode on YouTube has 3 million views.)

Completely overshadowing the winning team of Cody "Beef" Franke, who tragically passed away right after the Internet Invitational took place, alongside US Amateur champion Brad Dalke of “Good Good Golf” and Barstool Sports personality Francis Ellis were the alleged cheating controversies of their final-match opponents — specifically golf influencers Paige Spiranac and Malosi Togisala, also of "Good Good."

We've already addressed the two biggest "for the good of the game" issues that have been constantly debated on social media — an improved lie and the slope "on" feature of a rangefinder.

Malosi admits to cheating with the slope 'on' feature... sort of

The inaugural Internet Invitational Champions:

Cody “Beef” Franke, Brad Dalke, and Francis Ellis pic.twitter.com/S27WBzTr2D
— The Internet Invitational (@Internetinvite) November 14, 2025

Big Mo admitted to his "Good Good Golf" colleagues that he originally had the slope feature "on," but claims that for the dispute in question, he had turned it "off."

"I did have the slope on the first hole of the Internet Invitational," Malosi admitted.

But then Mo says that Portnoy was asked if they were allowed to have the slope feature "on," and it was decided no.

"I told people I will die on this hill," Malosi continued. "The slope was off."

The Slope WAS on during the @Internetinvite 😳

Full podcast live pic.twitter.com/pO7mr9DRTu
— Good Good Golf (@goodgood_golf) November 24, 2025

As a crappy amateur golf myself with a pathetic 16.0 handicap index, slope "on" vs. "off" is an adorable concept, because it will make zero difference 99% of the time for hacks like me.

Malosi is in the +1 range, so it could make a big difference to him given that means he's slightly better than scratch. To put that in perspective, only 1-2% of amateur golfers are scratch or better.

But one comment from Spiranac on the other controversy has still stuck with me.

golf influencer Paige Spiranac — Paige Spiranac / Instagram

'I thought you could do that'

Big Mo allegedly has a reputation for, shall we say, bending the rules a little bit. Heck, not even his "Good Good Golf" colleague Dalke fully defended him. He only said don't go after his family, which yes, is obvious.

Feel free to have your own opinion on whether Mo cheated or not, just do not go after his family please… pic.twitter.com/GdxcNCjmr3
— Brad Dalke (@DalkeKong3) November 16, 2025

Spiranac is accused of improving Malosi's lie, but that comment from her seems to suggest that Portnoy had told contestants to not worry about the stuffy buttoned-up rules of golf that can at times be so infuriating for amateurs. Or like with many group of friends that hit the links together, they create their own agreed-to adjustments.

There seems to be a rules discrepancy over this lie at the @InternetInvite pic.twitter.com/Okfe2d7Sti
— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) November 14, 2025

Spiranac finally addressed the controversy after the fact today for the first time in an AMA on her Instagram Stories.

Spiranac admits she unintentionally cheated

Her emotional tear-filled testimonial before the final episode was dropped brought her some sympathy in the moment, but no one had realized the full context.

"I haven't really talked about it because there's not much to say," Spiranac said today. "I don't have much to say about the situation honestly. I am painfully, painfully embarrassed that I did not know this rule, especially after the crappy comment I made to Francis about competitive golf, and the irony is not lost on me."

Frances is Barstool Sports personality Frankie Borelli, who was the third member of their team, skulling his chip shot on the last hole to lose the $1 million match.

An all-time edit. pic.twitter.com/wbh6SUOTs4
— The Internet Invitational (@Internetinvite) November 14, 2025

"But I would never intentionally cheat. In all of my years of playing golf, I have never been accused of cheating. I went to identify the golf ball, and when I did, I pushed some grass to the side, and then a couple of feet back, I pushed some grass aside. I never stomped down the grass. And I thought high grass was a loose impediment. If the ball didn't move, if the lie didn't change, the grass didn't bend or break, or get ripped out of the ground, then it was totally within the rules. There were so many cameras on me. There were so many people around me. I mean, to blatantly cheat with that many people around, that many cameras around would be insane. So I made a mistake, I learned now it was was a rules infraction, and I'll never do it again."

Finally Paige. I wish you would have addressed this as soon as it went viral.

Again, whether you believe her or not, who cares. And I still stand by her original comment that Portnoy wanted entertainment value first and foremost.

I fully defend Spiranac in this instance too after her explanation, because as she puts it, she had a ton of cameras on her. Why would she blatantly cheat?

In the end, this has gotten Spiranac a massive amount of additional exposure that she can use to her advantage, especially if the ultimate goal is to be an on-air personality for professional golf.

Like we said, they'd die for this kind of heat.

UPDATE: To be crystal clear, the harassment that Spiranac went through, which we had addressed beforehand, but ratcheted up exponentially after the virality of the cheating accusations when the final episode dropped, including the unspeakable amount of death threats, is truly disturbing.

🚨👱🏻‍♀️🌾 #NEW: Paige Spiranac addresses the alleged cheating scandal at the Internet Invitational: “I would never intentionally cheat, in all of my years playing golf I have never been accused of cheating.”@PaigeSpiranac says she’s received more than 10K threats on her life. pic.twitter.com/QGp40tImfx
— NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) November 25, 2025

To this we say, why hasn't Portnoy come out and defended Spiranac?

I wrote in the original post about the this, again, overblown controversy.

It feels like Portnoy could have left this controversy out of the final edit, especially given it didn't affect the outcome. Now Spiranac is under fire.

That feels a little unfair.

It turns out it was scarily unfair for Spiranac.

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