8 Times Official Team Accounts Whiffed on Social Media
Social media is a live, trial-by-fire sort of ordeal where even one mistake ruins everything—even for official professional team accounts.
Professional athletes have plenty of gaffes on Twitter and Facebook as well, but it is even funnier when a joke or hashtag goes awry and the power of the internet takes over with a tidal wave of ridicule.
Over the years, official team social media accounts have modernized alongside the times, going from straight news-type posts like a newspaper to posting memes, jokes and trading jabs with other teams.
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Sheer genius, really, until it goes awry. Here's a look at some of the notable recent social media whiffs.
Chiefs Take Shot in the DMs
To be honest, 2012 seems like the Stone Age for social media now.
Case in point—somebody in charge of the Kansas City Chiefs' Twitter account didn't like a fan criticizing the team and took a shot at said fan via direct message (DM).
The Chiefs, of course, backpedaled when word spread around the internet:
Don't bag the Chiefs too much for this one. These were the growing pains for official team accounts way back when, and Kansas City now has one of the better accounts out there. This still makes for a good chuckle, though.
76ers Get Political
Like the Chiefs, the Philadelphia 76ers have one of the better sports accounts out there.
As the game of social media goes, though, every now and then any account will take an "L"—like when the 76ers didn't like ABC's Ben Gittleson reporting Ohio governor John Kasich took a swipe at the team:
This one would've been better off left without a reply, which is probably why the 76ers ghosted it.
After all, the 76ers took a whopping 72 Ls last season and weren't exactly in position to evaluate the track record of others.
#CowboysUK
Anyone halfway familiar with the hivemind of the internet knows how the above hashtag played out.
The Dallas Cowboys were all excited to play a game in London back in 2014. Great, as the slow global expansion of the NFL is awesome.
Except someone didn't read the hashtag out loud:
Cowboys U.K. CowboysUK. Cowboysuk.
See the problem? Childish, sure, but so it goes on the ruthless internet.
Bills Can't Believe Team Actually Won
The 2013 season was something of an abyss for the Buffalo Bills, an eventual 6-10 campaign.
The Bills hadn't won more than seven games in a season since 2004 and wouldn't again until 2014, so folks will have to forgive the people at the wheel of the social media account for momentarily falling asleep—like in September 2013 when the Bills scored a late touchdown to get a win.
Somebody didn't tell the Bills a 24-23 outcome was considered final, though. Buffalo axed the tweet, but everything lives forever on the internet:
Bonus round: Buffalo was otherwise downright awesome back then:
Cubs Shoot Down Needy Fan
Official team accounts get asked for free swag all the time.
For whatever reason, the Chicago Cubs didn't take too kindly to one Kyle Schwarber fan asking for a free jersey, though.
In fact, the Cubs pulled the whole you-can't-DM-us knee-slapper:
While somewhat funny, one has to wonder what the poor fan did to deserve that one.
Jets Autopilot Wrong Name Into Post
At first pass, this Facebook post by the New York Jets doesn't look so ridiculous:
Except that is quite a lot of shares and comments for an offseason post about a star player throwing out an opening pitch.
A little investigative work shows the Jets accidentally put Muhammad Ali's name in there instead of Muhammad Wilkerson's, giving the internet plenty of ammo to criticize.
In the grand scheme of social media mistakes this registers small, but it makes for a funny blunder to recall.
Texans Can't Predict the Future...But Wish They Could
More than 4,000 people voted, with the majority deciding the Houston Texans would score their first touchdown of the night via the air in a recent Thursday Night Football matchup against the New England Patriots.
Reasonable enough—except the Texans didn't score at all, which doesn't get it done against a New England Patriots team even missing Tom Brady.
The poll:
The blame falls more on the team than the official account, obviously, but so it goes with the game of social media often resembling a lottery with a loss looking something like this.
Rockets Whiff on Emoji Usage
Everything was rather normal in the NBA, with the Houston Rockets taking care of business against the Dallas Mavericks.
Then the Rockets dropped a bombshell of a tweet, as captured by Ben Rohrbach of Yahoo Sports:
This tweet was an example of social media gone wrong, with the man responsible, Chad Shanks, losing his job and offering his perspective later in an interview with the Houston Chronicle's Jonathan Feigen:
"I never meant to offend anybody. I attempted an admittedly edgy jab at the Mavericks’ expense and it did not go over well with everyone. The organization supported my efforts to make the account one of the best in the NBA by pushing the envelope, but they deemed this too far.
"
Indeed a whiff, this epic hiccup in the realm of professional team's social media accounts seemed to draw a line in the sand all continue to adhere to.
It's all fun and games until the emojis come out. The Rockets won't leave the throne belonging to the biggest whiff in recent memory anytime soon.
Follow Chris Roling (@Chris_Roling) on Twitter.
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