Pat Forde of  Yahoo! Sports reported late on Thursday night that Chip Kelly had emerged as a serious candidate for the Ole Miss head coaching vacancy job, a week after Hugh Freeze resigned as the school’s head coach.

However, if you take a closer look, you’ll notice that’s not a tweet from Pat Forde.

A tweet from Pat Forde looks like this:

Notice any differences? The real Pat Forde Twitter has a blue checkmark, for one.

But the fake Forde account also has an extra “o” in the name Yahoo. @YahoooForde (fake) vs @YahooForde (real).

Then there’s follower count. Fake Forde has 214 followers, while Real Forde has 339,000 followers.

Unfortunately, Sports Illustrated didn’t pick up on these things, and ran a story based on Fake Forde’s report. And the story has been up for over an hour now.

Let this serve as another reminder to always look for blue checkmarks and follower counts on Twitter, especially before publishing a story. It’s one thing to retweet a fake account, but actually publishing a story on a major outlet based on the (fake) report is another level of embarrassing.

About Matt Clapp

Matt is an editor at The Comeback. He attended Colorado State University, wishes he was Saved by the Bell's Zack Morris, and idolizes Larry David. And loves pizza and dogs because obviously.

He can be followed on Twitter at @Matt2Clapp (also @TheBlogfines for Cubs/MLB tweets and @DaBearNecess for Bears/NFL tweets), and can be reached by email at mclapp@thecomeback.com.