Fact Check: Is Micah Parsons’ Penn State Dance Video AI Generated?

Micah Parsons has had a stellar career in the NFL so far. Since entering the league in 2021, the Packers DE has undeniably become one of the best at his position, becoming the only player since 1982 to record 12 or more sacks in each of his first five seasons.

He is also a five-time Pro Bowler and multi-time First-team All-Pro, fondly loved by fans in Dallas and Green Bay. On paper, Parsons’ NFL career is as perfect as it can get. Yet there is one aspect of his football journey that has consistently made him a figure of ridicule: a dancing clip from his Penn State days that seems to resurface multiple times every year.

Claim: Micah Parsons, as part of Penn State’s football freshmen group, danced in the Thon 2018 pep rally, where he is seen dancing girlishly and even twerking on stage.

Source of the Claim: News aggregators and popular X pages like ‘Fear Buck’ have made it a habit to resurface the video and flood their followers’ feeds with it at least once a year.

Micah Parsons says his old Penn State dancing video was “AI” after Silky discovered it on stream pic.twitter.com/F6Sav2IL12

— FearBuck (@FearedBuck) February 5, 2026

Verdict: True. The dancing video is real. Penn State freshmen have a long-standing tradition of participating in the THON pep rally. This also includes an annual rite of passage, which involves dancing with their classmates at the event.

In 2018, five-star recruit Micah Parsons and his crew decided to bust some moves to popular songs like Backstreet Boys’ Move Your Body. They also shook their legs and hips to a Nicki Minaj song, where freshman defensive end Yetur Gross-Matos sported the rapper’s look while Parsons busted his moves next to his teammate.

It is unclear why the DE chose to twerk on stage. What is clear, however, is that he is not proud of it. Last year, when Parsons appeared on Twitch streamer Silky’s stream and was asked about the veracity of the video, he denied it outright, yelling that it is AI-generated.

But there is a clear YouTube video of the said clip from 2018, an era where AI was just a theoretical forecast in science journals. Moreover, multiple articles and reports from 2018 have clearly mentioned Parsons as one of the participants in the dance.

No, that’s a real video from 2018 of Micah Parsons dancing at Penn State’s THON pep rally. It’s authentic footage from his freshman year, not AI-generated. Sources like PennLive and YouTube confirm it.

— Grok (@grok) February 5, 2026

So, unless there is time travel in play, Micah Parsons’ denial stands false. His viral Penn State dance video isn’t AI-generated.