The University of Michigan’s football program is at a crossroads. They haven’t lost fewer than five games since 2011, they haven’t beaten rival Ohio State since that same year, and they just watched those Buckeyes win a national championship. Yet, they’ve brought in alumnus Jim Harbaugh, whose last game as a college head coach was a win in the Orange Bowl for Stanford. Everybody’s wondering in what direction the program is heading, backward or forward. Or maybe sideways, to become an internet startup aggregating sexy listicles?
https://twitter.com/ChrisBurke_SI/status/631418775645093889
Unfortunately, no, they aren’t officially becoming a Maxim ripoff; their social media accounts were just hacked. According to Awful Announcing, both UM’s Twitter and Facebook accounts were victimized early Wednesday morning (along with those of a couple other sports), though both have since been restored.
There doesn’t seem to be any screenshots of the tweets Michigan Football sent while under an evil internet wizard’s spell, but Awful Announcing screencapped a couple of their Facebook posts:
Yep, garden variety Just For Men clickbait from a site called Crazie Videos. Honestly, they probably got a few clicks from intrigued dudebro Michigan fans. There have been worse social media strategies from sports teams, but if Harbaugh can’t turn the program around, they might want some Kim Kardashian around to distract their fans.
The University released a statement addressing and apologizing for the hack on their restored Facebook page later Wednesday morning:
So, is clickbait offensive? Is calling Kim Kardashian “bloated” offensive? (Probably.) Clearly the school had to take the hacked posts down, but it would be nice if their PR department was a little more honest and said, “Those posts were stupid, and we would never post something that stupid. That’s why we’re taking them down and restoring our videos asking each offensive lineman his favorite ice cream flavor.” It wasn’t meant to be this time, but we can always dream.
(Via Awful Announcing)
