Driving time between the homes of the Columbus Crew and Colorado Rapids. Driving time between the homes of the Columbus Crew and Colorado Rapids. (Google Maps.)

It’s a 1,251 mile drive from the Colorado Rapids’ home field at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, CO to the Columbus Crew’s Lower.com Field in Ohio, as seen above. But London (UK)-based paper The Daily Mirror didn’t know the difference, at least not in a tweet.

The paper sent a tweet Friday evening UK time for a story on complaints from Rapids fans to Stan Kroenke’s Kroenke Sports and Entertainment ownership group (they also own the Los Angeles Rams, the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche, the Colorado Mammoth, and more, and they’re notable in the UK because they also own Arsenal), but misidentified them as Crew supporters. (The Crew are currently owned by a group led by Jimmy Haslam and Pete Edwards.) And while the actual story was correct (at least at the point we were able to view it), the tweet was not, but remained up for at least five and a half hours, racking up the following view and like stats as of 9:30 p.m. Eastern Time Friday night:

A Mirror Football tweet mixing up the Colorado Rapids and Columbus Crew.
A Mirror Football tweet mixing up the Colorado Rapids and Columbus Crew. (Mirror Football on Twitter.)

That’s a good excuse to pull out a classic Get Smart graphic:

Get Smart.
A “Missed It By That Much” line on Get Smart.

This is certainly far from the first sports geography error we’ve seen. But it is an amusing one, especially from a British tabloid that doesn’t have the greatest record of factual accuracy. And yes, it’s understandable why they ran the actual story here, on Rapids’ fans complaints to the Kroenkes about their stadium and the response from Josh Kroenke (Stan’s son). But they did get it quite wrong in the tweet.

[Mirror Football on Twitter]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.