Anthony Donatelli wanted to teach his daughter, Reese, colors, geography, and a bit about the sport he grew up watching. So, he added a set of mini NFL helmets to his Amazon cart, had them paid for, and got them delivered home. Anthony had no bigger plan than that in mind, but Reese manifested. On came an Instagram series titled ‘Trust the Toddler,’ where the four-year-old began predicting the outcomes of NFL games.

The series was started almost four years ago, when Reese could barely talk. She once even chucked the mini helmets across the room because learning about the NFL and geography simply wasn’t on her priority list. Her picks, chaotic and almost always wrong, became a source of lighthearted entertainment for social media. However, that took a dark turn after a chunk of NFL fans decided to follow her predictions to place their wager.

“It’s nuts,” Donatelli, of Riverside, told the Los Angeles Times, after his family started receiving messages from people, saying they owed them money because Reese’s picks were wrong.

“She’s obviously not an NFL analyst. She’s picking teams based on the color of her dress, or she’ll pick the Packers because she likes cheese. She just relates these silly little things as reasons why she picks certain teams.”

During the first week of the NFL playoffs, when all of Reese’s predictions proved wrong, many began lashing out. It caught so much attention that even rapper Cardi B, who is Stefon Diggs’ partner, commented about it. During an Instagram live, Cardi B said:

“Little white girl said we’re going to win. F— that, b—!”

However, she immediately apologized for her words and explained that she didn’t really mean to say that. That didn’t sit well with Anthony Donatelli, though. He opined that the rapper’s comment was “unfortunate”, but wasn’t looking to escalate things.

“I’m not here to fight fire with fire. I’m not angry,” he mentioned. “We don’t want anybody or anything to ruin what Reese and I have created and how we bond.”

For years, NFL fans enjoyed Reese’s sass as she picked teams, sometimes by grabbing a helmet or tossing it away. She was just nine months old when the series was started, but the videos began trending with millions of views.

“I said, you know what, we might have something here,” he recalled about starting the series. “It just clicked. I would put the match-ups of who was going to play that week in front of her, and for the past four years she’s been calling football games. And she’s been pretty dang good at it.”

The curse of Reese’s picks ended

During the first week of the playoffs, there were six games, and each time, the kid guessed it wrong. Social media users began calling it ‘the curse of Reese’s picks’.

A week later, it didn’t get much better. Her record slipped to 1–9 after she chose the Buffalo Bills, San Francisco 49ers, and Chicago Bears to win their games. What had once been shrugged off as toddler chaos was now being tracked, tallied, and scrutinized.

However, it was the New England Patriots who broke the so-called curse, after they defeated the Houston Texans, 28-16, in the Divisional Playoff round.

Initially, Patriots’ fans were left in a panic as they considered her pick a bad omen, but the divisional playoff win means the franchise will next be seen in the Conference Championship against the Denver Broncos.

While the father doesn’t plan on stopping the tradition with his daughter, he has made his Instagram account private. He currently has 28.3K followers on Instagram.

Who is Anthony Donatelli?

Anthony Donatelli lives in Riverside, California, with his family. He married his wife, Torri, in 2014, and they welcomed their daughter, Reese, in 2021 and their son, Banks, in 2025.

He is a radio personality who has spent close to ten years at 95.1 K-FROG.

A familiar voice in Southern California’s country landscape, he co-hosts Kelli & Anthony in the Morning, airing from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. His work has earned him nominations for both the ACM and CMA Large Market On-Air Personality of the Year awards.

In addition, he worked as the in-arena host for the Ontario Fury indoor soccer team and was inducted into the inaugural 2024 Hall of Fame class at his alma mater, California State University, San Bernardino.