"We're a little in shock," WPXI-TV morning anchor Todd McDermott told a live audience in Pittsburgh on Wednesday after reporting that wideout Hines Ward had signed a free-agent contract with the hated Ravens.
Utter fiction, and station brass quickly moved to apologize to viewers: "We got spoofed!" the station tweeted.
The reporter's source?
Not the Steelers. Not the Ravens. Word came via everybody's favorite source for breaking NFL news: BroCouncil.com.
A little background on Bro Council. Their heady mantra reads as follows: "News, videos, advice, man stuff. Bro Council -- a website for respectable men ... plus, your wife or girlfriend will like it since we keep it clean."
The Ward article screams "false flag" from line one. Telling us the 35-year-old wideout signed "an incentive laden 3 year, $9 million contract" with Baltimore, it glosses over the fact that free agency doesn't actually begin until March 13, and that Ward -- who will be released after 14 years in the Steel City -- has yet to be cut by the Steelers.
"Pittsburgh Steelers football may not be the same without him, but his smile was pretty creepy anyway," Steelers president Art Rooney II is credited as saying in the spoof.
Somehow, some way, this passed the smell test at WPXI.