Conservative football fans are freaking out about this totally fake NFL rumor

Some conservative football fans appear to have been taken in by a (totally fake) rumor that the NFL will no longer perform “The Star Spangled Banner” prior to games starting in 2017.

The (totally fake) rumor appears to have originated on the conservative clickbait site Departed.co, which boasts other very legit headlines such as “Mystery scars on Obama’s head prompt another question from conspiracy theorists — has the president had bain surgery?” Incidentally, the contact info listed on the website includes a mailing address in Georgia (the country, not the state).

But that didn’t stop the (totally fake) story from being shared hundreds of times on Facebook, mostly through the page “United States presidential election, 2016,” which seems to share nothing but departed.co stories. Fans of professional football and far-right conspiracy theories were distraught at the news.

The anger spread widely enough that Snopes responded with a report debunking the (totally fake) rumor, linking it to a recent story about the NFL returning money paid to it by the U.S. government for patriotic displays.

The original departed.co post has since updated to include the entire copied-and-pasted text of the Snopes post at the bottom of the article, which is sure to convince a lot of people.

We e-mailed the NFL to see if they had any comment on this disturbing (totally fake) report. No response yet, which suggests maybe they have something to hide, or that it’s totally fake, or that they had other things on their plate.