A rumor circulating online in July 2025 claimed that Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen had paid off the student loan debt for the graduating class of 2018 at his alma mater, the University of Wyoming. Snopes readers searched the site wondering if the rumor was true.
For example, onJuly 12, 2025, a Facebook page called The Bills Superfanposted (archived) the story, receiving over 10,000 likes. The story began, "Josh Allen Quietly Pays Off Student Loan Debt for Entire University of Wyoming Class of 2018. No cameras. No press run. Just impact - Giving dozens of young graduates a debt-free start."
OtherFacebookusers also shared the same claim. Many of those posts featured links in top comments leading to articles hosted by WordPress blogs, such as one story hosted on thefanhub.cafex.biz website.
However, searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no news media outlets reporting on Allen's supposed generosity. Prominent news media outlets would have reported this rumor, if true.
Rather, the person or people who authored the story fabricated the entire tale as one of hundreds of inspirational tales that depicted celebrities and athletes performing inspiring acts of kindness. They aimed to earn advertising revenue on websites linked from the aforementioned Facebook posts. As we'll lay out later in this article, the story about Allen amounted to fiction.
An examination of theBills Superfan page's stories revealed that some images on the site were AI generated. For example, the page's header image featureda textbook sign of AI, an incredibly garbled "NFL" logo on the child's jersey. Even when the images weren't AI generated, however, the stories they were attached to were equally fictional.
Snopes contacted a manager of the Facebook page to ask about the fictional stories displayed on the feed and reached out to Allen's agents. We will update this story if we receive more information.
These stories all very much resembledglurge, which Dictionary.comdefines as "stories, often sent by email, that are supposed to be true and uplifting, but which are often fabricated and sentimental."
Allen has used some of his money to forgive debt in the past, according to theFresno Bee. In 2022, the quarterback partnered with ForgiveCo, a public benefit company that buys people's debt and then writes it off.
This isn't the first time Snopes has reported on supposed do-goodery of NFL (or former NFL) quarterbacks —hall-of-famer Peyton Manning is a common subject.