Remember April Fools 2009

Every year someone tries to get everyone else by pulling off an epic prank but sometimes the best pranks are not the ones that start out to be epic but instead are simply wrote to prank a few readers on a modest little website.  Case in point, my 2009 article about Jason Taylor.

The article originally was intended to fool a few of our forum members who really wanted to see Taylor back with the Dolphins.  After he had returned to Miami I felt the need to really let loose and try and bring a little somber news to the euphoria of some of those few.  Instead, I got a lot more.  While only a few people in the media ever gave me full credit for the start of this rumor, I received a ton of Emails telling me where it had surfaced.

Even today, it still get’s mentioned by my colleagues, friends, some close friends in the media, and well, that makes me smile just a little bit.

What made the prank so much fun was not the fact that so many bought into it.  It was reported on the Washington Post where a slew of websites took off with the news.  ESPN talked about it on one of their shows and it appeared on Fox and CBS’ sports sites as well as a myriad of other NFL related talk shows and websites.  That wasn’t even the fun part of this simple hoax.

Weeks and then months had gone by and still there was confusion about whether the Dolphins actually had to give up a draft pick.  In Miami, Mike Berardino of the Sun-Sentinel was still denying to fans that the Dolphins would have to compensate the Redskins, both just before the draft and then after the draft looking ahead to 2010.  To make it even funnier, while he said on several occasions that it was an April Fools joke, some still didn’t believe him.  I actually posted a response to him on one of his articles about it apologizing for the hoax in it’s entirety and directing his readers to the original article…again you can read that here.

Over the last few years I have been asked why I haven’t gone out of my way to try and launch another high-profile prank and my answer to that is just as simple as the original idea of that first article, it’s hard to come up with something so simple and yet really hit the pulse of everyone’s thoughts…plus when you get inundated with Emails as 4-1 approaches you kind of get the feeling that everyone is ready for anything you have to post that day…which is why I rarely post at all on April Fools.