Who is Jackson Mahomes: His TikTok career, athletic ability, education, allegations

When Jackson Mahomes was in high school in East Texas, his father — former major league pitcher Pat Mahomes — told a sports reporter that Jackson has “always been one that garners the spotlight.”

That spotlight has become searing hot after the owner of an Overland Park bar and grill accused him of sexually assaulting her on Feb. 25. A video from the restaurant shows what happened.

“Jackson has done nothing wrong,” his attorney said.

After The Star reported the incident, Mahomes largely disappeared from his social media accounts — TikTok, Instagram, Twitter — the quietest he has been in a rather tumultuous couple of years.

Mahomes is the younger brother of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, a relationship he said on his first YouTube video he doesn’t use “for clout … but let’s just be honest, it does have a lot of advantages.” It certainly helped him garner more than a million followers of his own.

In the caption of a 2019 TikTok, as he was just getting started in social media, Mahomes wrote: “Yes, Patrick Mahomes is my brother.”

Since the 2019-20 season, Mahomes has made TikToks at Chiefs games, at the Super Bowl, in bars, in his apartments, and side by side with other content creators who have much larger followings than he does.

He has 1.1 million TikTok followers, 260,000 on Instagram and nearly 25,000 on YouTube.

Like every other content creator, Mahomes only reveals what he wants the public to know.

Here is what we know about him:

What Jackson Mahomes’ videos reveal

His videos have shown the world that he likes houseplants, loves Chick-fil-A, drives a Range Rover, has a dachshund, at one time had “Fifty Shades of Grey” on his coffee table, thinks he might have a bit of obsessive-compulsive disorder — his kitchen counters are usually clear of clutter — and his mass of sneakers contains shoes from his brother’s collection that others haven’t seen yet.

It’s how his followers know that he is most insecure about the sound of his voice. His brother Patrick laughs off jokes about his own voice, but Jackson rarely speaks in his videos.

As soon as he starts talking, he says, people ask him, “Are you gay?” At this point, every post he makes invites comment, conjecture and bullying about his sexuality. People constantly bomb him with gay slurs.

“I am not gay. I am attracted to girls,” he said in his first YouTube video two years ago. “And I think it’s actually really a hurtful question because I am friends with a bunch of people who are gay, and it’s just really kinda disrespectful, in my opinion, to ever judge someone based on what they choose.”

His TikTok bio reads: “Sup I get Bullied a lot but I’m still here.”

He gave up basketball

In a 2020 TikTok, Mahomes responded to critics by writing: “You think you can hurt my feelings. I’m the only boy in my family that doesnt play sports.”

Maybe not anymore, but Mahomes played standout basketball at Whitehouse High School near Tyler, Texas, where Patrick played several sports. Clips of Jackson’s moves on the court live online in YouTube and highlight reels.

In a February 2018 story about Jackson Mahomes and his high school career, the East Texas Sports Network pointed out that “in a family of multi-sport athletes, Mahomes deviates.”

Before reaching high school, Mahomes gave up football and the baseball team his dad coached “just to go a different direction than my brother,” he told the sports network.

Out from the shadows

Mahomes explained in one YouTube video what it was like being compared to his father and brother his entire life. The video introduced followers to his clothing line, called “Unathletic.”

“My whole life has been compared to my dad, a major league baseball player, and my brother’s in the NFL, my godfather was a major league baseball player,” he said.

“And then there’s me. Yes, I did play basketball. I love basketball. I played it for so long, but I wasn’t in love with it when I had the opportunity to go to college.

“So after that, I was very, like lonely and sad. I didn’t know what I was gonna do with my life. So I went to college to study marketing, but then I started TikTok and it was very fun. I really loved it a lot. And now I’m doing YouTube. So you know what, that’s like really unathletic,” he said, laughing.

Straight A college student

Out of high school, Mahomes attended the University of Texas at Tyler from the fall of 2018 through the fall of 2019, according to a UT spokeswoman. He made the President’s Honor Roll in the spring of 2019, a school press release says., meaning he got an “A” in all his classes.

After moving to Kansas City, he attended the University of Missouri-Kansas City from the spring semester of 2020 through spring semester 2021, according to a UMKC spokeswoman. Mahomes told his YouTube followers he studied marketing there.

He became a UT student again in the summer of 2021 and graduated last summer.

On April 7, 2022, his mother, Randi Mahomes, tweeted a photo of him with this caption: “I’m about to have a college graduate!! I’m so proud of you @jacksonmahomes.”

She wrote how he was the first in the family to graduate college. (Patrick was drafted into the NFL in 2017 after his junior year at Texas Tech.)

Love/hate with NFL fans

In December 2021, Mahomes flirted with Public Enemy No. 1 status in Kansas City when he blasted Kansas City bar SoT on his Instagram to his then-255,000 followers, complaining about alleged poor service and ruder servers.

The bar responded by grouping him with other “people with unearned status and a sense of entitlement (who) think they are above the rules and will lash out at the employee enforcing them.” The bar later apologized.

NFL fans, by and large, complain about his TikTok antics. They say as much every time he posts a TikTok from a Chiefs game. The 2021-22 season was particularly rough, marked by what most commenters considered major fumbles, but others shrugged off as “that’s just TikTok.”

In September 2021, he doused rowdy Ravens fans with water at a “Sunday Night Football” game in Baltimore. Video went viral across social media, seen millions of times. His brother had to sop up the mess.

“Yeah, I mean, obviously it’s something that,” Patrick said at a news conference. “There was things said to him, and (Patrick’s wife) Brittany, that you don’t see kind of on the clip. But, I mean he’s been good at it, at not trying to respond to that stuff.

“He takes a lot and he’s usually pretty good at it, and he’ll learn from it and just try to stay away from those people as best he can.”

Mahomes caught more shade the following month when he danced on a memorial logo celebrating the late Washington player Sean Taylor, a murder victim, at FedEx Field. He later apologized and said he and others were told to stand there before the game.

Is he rich?

Last month, Mahomes earned dozens of negative comments on a video he posted showing him packing for the Super Bowl.

He boarded a private jet with a Louis Vuitton bag. He sipped champagne in a marble bathroom.

The top comment on the post read: “Look how I spend my brother’s money like I earned it!.”

In 2020, after his brother signed a 10-year, $503 million contract extension with the Chiefs, Mahomes told his followers, “all of you guys think I’m like super loaded, but let’s just remember my brother’s the one who signed for a half a billion dollars and not me.”

In September 2020, Jackson Mahomes LLC was formed in Tyler, Texas. The registered agent was an Austin, Texas, wealth management firm, KM Capital Management Ltd., that specializes in representing sports and entertainment figures.

His net worth has never been made public, although some sports blogs declare him to be a millionaire in his own right. Given the size of his social media following, it’s possible.

“Instagram and influencers go hand-in-hand,” says Business Insider. “The Meta-owned social-media platform has become a primary stage for influencers launching their careers. And they don’t need millions of followers to earn money on Instagram.”

More brands are turning to creators with under 100,000 followers, making it possible to have a full-time career as a creator, the business publication says. One such “nano” influencer told Business Insider she can earn up to $600 a post.

But another, with 275,000 followers, said she had booked $700,000 in brand deals in six months.

Mahomes has 260,000 Instagram followers.

His TikToks over the last two years indicate he has had paid sponsorships with several companies, including Amazon Prime and Casetify, a company that makes cellphone covers. He has also tagged Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers on TikToks, using the hashtag #CaniacAmbassador.

In September 2020, Mahomes applied to trademark “Unathletic,” the name of his line of hoodies, sweatpants, T-shirts and other sportswear. The attorney of record was Chris Cabott, one of Patrick Mahomes’ agents.

The name “Unathletic” winks at Mahomes’ claim to be the only male non-athlete in his family. Other merchandise nods to how he’s trying to make his own way in life: “Jackson from TikTok.”

He has said he will never forget the first time people recognized him from TikTok instead of “Patrick Mahomes’ brother.”

The assault investigation

Police are investigating two incidents on Feb. 25 at Aspens Restaurant and Lounge, 6995 W. 151st St. in Overland Park.

Owner Aspen Vaughn, 40, provided a video to The Star that shows Mahomes grabbing her by the throat and kissing her at least twice in her office that night. At 6 foot 6, he towers over her by more than a foot.

“He forcibly kissed me out of nowhere,” Vaughn told The Star, “and I’m telling him, pushing him off saying ‘what are you doing?’ and then he proceeded to do it two more times where the last time I was pushing him off and I can see on the cameras that somebody was outside the office door and I was yelling for them to come help because he’s big and massive.”

He is also accused of shoving a 19-year-old male waiter more than once that night.

TikTok videos Mahomes posted in 2020 and 2022 showed him holding a woman by the throat as he kissed her and getting slapped by another content creator after he grabbed her.

“Our investigation has revealed substantial evidence refuting the claims of Jackson’s accuser including the statements of several witnesses,” an attorney for Mahomes, Brandan Davies, told The Star in a statement.

“We have reached out to law enforcement to provide the fruit of our investigation so that they may have a complete picture of the matter.”