NFL prematurely promotes Vikings/Patriots Super Bowl
PHILADELPHIA -- The National Football League on Friday deleted a Facebook post promoting a contest for Super Bowl tickets between the Minnesota Vikings and the New England Patriots.
On Tuesday, the NFL posted on Facebook a contest offering the chance for participants to win tickets to Super Bowl LII.
What caught the eyes of every Philadelphia Eagles and Jacksonville Jaguars fan was not only the graphic, which featured Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and Vikings quarterback Case Keenum, but the fact that the copy clearly said: "When you donate to United Way, you could score 2 club-level seats to watch the PATRIOTS vs. the VIKINGS battle it out for the coveted Super Bowl title!"
After three days and hundreds of shares, the post was deleted Friday afternoon.
In addition to the suspicious Facebook post, internet sleuths quickly noticed that if you googled "Minnesota Vikings Super Bowl appearances" a search result came up showing the graphic for Super Bowl LII.
A similar search for the New England Patriots returned the same image.
Curiously, when sister station WPVI-TV ran the same search for the Eagles and Jaguars, no such Super Bowl LII appeared.
This can all be chalked off to perhaps a clerical error on behalf of a NFL social media manager and that could maybe somehow lead to the production of the Google Super Bowl LII image result, but some see something more sinister afoot. Could it be a conspiracy? Is the game fixed?
