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Someone Just Went to a Lot of Trouble to Start a Donovan McNabb Rumor

by Dan Levy • Mar 10, 2010 5:30 PM EST

One of the biggest rumors of the NFL offseason is that one of the Philadelphia quarterbacks is going to get traded. So when the football forum site gridironfans.com put up a link that said "Donovan Mcnabb Traded To The San Francisco 49ers" it seemed entirely plausible. Until, of course, you clicked the link.

The site "credits" ESPN's Michael Smith with the scoop, and someone went to a lot of trouble to spoof ESPN's NFL page to make this look as legit as possible. They probably should have tried to use spellcheck.



The first indicator is a headline reading "Donavon Mcnabb" and not Donovan McNabb. Second would be getting the name of the town correct. Then there's leading an ESPN story with Espn, and since when does "the NFL" confirm any story like this? The best line, however, is "one of San Frans 1rst round draft picks," which is not exactly compliant with the AP stylebook. And wonderful punctuation too.

Here's a link to the full screen grab. Good try, internet.

(Update: It turns out, it may have fooled some people, after all. Egg, meet face.)

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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Read More: donavan mcnabb, michael smith, espn, sportingblog, Philadelphia Eagles

Comments

Display:

I wanted to personally apologize to everyone for the
news posted earlier today on GridironFans.com about the Eagles
trading Donovan McNabb to the 49ers. Unfortunately we were one of many others who were taken in by the false news report today.
 
By the time we were able to catch the story that was posted as a hoax,
it was too late. The story had made it’s rounds and was exposed as
nothing more than an elaborate rouse that caught one of our news
reporters off guard.

We at GridironFans.com pride ourselves in scouring the internet
and bringing everyone all the news around the NFL as quickly as possible. A
perfect storm of circumstances though allowed this story to be posted
and stay posted longer than it should have. One of our news reporters
saw the "story" right when he was about to leave work and he posted the
story in haste. This unfortunately led to the story staying up on our
site way longer than it should have and having the story go out via
Twitter, our RSS feed as well as being posted on numerous other sites
like Yardbarker.com and BallHype.com as news. The damage was done by
the time an administrator on the site was able to react and delete the
story. Let me assure you that this was nothing more than an honest
mistake by one of our reporters and I hope this one mistake doesn’t
shake your faith in us to bring you the latest NFL news.
 
We have made it a point to reiterate to our reporters that every and
any news post that is put up needs to be verified before posting. I
know people will read this and think "well, that should have been the
policy ALL THE TIME." I want to assure you that verifying the news is
standard procedure at GridironFans.com but circumstances today led
to this false story being posted. We aren’t the first website to be
taken in by a false report and we won’t be the last. Unfortunately for
us it was our turn in the crosshairs. I hope that in time we can redeem
ourselves in the eyes of readers who were upset over the report. Thank
you for taking the time out to read this and hearing us out.
 
Sincerely,
Steve Marin
Owner, GridironFans.com

by SteveRobWhatever on Mar 11, 2010 1:18 AM EST reply actions  

Yeah, I’ve got a nice bridge in San Fransisko too sell you, K?

by old__Chuckeye on Mar 11, 2010 11:38 AM EST reply actions  

Is 1rst a combination of 1st and worst?

by faustus1500 on Mar 11, 2010 12:41 PM EST reply actions  

I, for one, am a Steve Martin fan.

by bduker on Mar 12, 2010 9:09 AM EST reply actions  

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