Food Lion fumbles Super Bowl ticket giveaway

Major supermarket chain Food Lion has some Super Bowl tickets to give away. That’s a huge marketing tool right there. It would be pretty hard to mess this one up.

Oops.

Someone with the company decided a great way to promote the giveaway would be to send out conciliatory tweets to various NFL markets on Friday, saying the teams’ fans can still go to the Super Bowl even though their teams won’t be there.

Here’s some examples:

Sorry @dallascowboys fans. Romo isn’t taking the team to the Super Bowl. But you can still go.

Eli won’t be playing in AZ in Feb. but @Giants fans can still go to the Super Bowl.

Don’t pout @49ers fans. Your team isn’t going to the Super Bowl but you can still go.

Other teams whose lucky fans got similar tweets included the Pittsburgh Steelers, Washington Redskins and Atlanta Falcons.

Problem is, none of those teams have been eliminated from the playoffs -- which means all of them still have a shot at playing in the Super Bowl.

In fact, three of them -- the Cowboys, Steelers and Falcons -- would be in the playoffs if the season ended today, with the Saints (tied with Atlanta for the NFC South lead) and 49ers (at 6-4) still very much in the hunt.

Very soon after sending out the initial tweets, the error was realized and another message was sent out via Twitter:

Our apologies ... Everyone can go to the Super Bowl! Including the @49ers @steelers @Panthers @dallascowboys @Atlanta_Falcons @Giants @Saints

Not to be nitpicky, but that tweet isn’t factually correct either. The Oakland Raiders actually have been eliminated from the playoffs.

About three hours after they were initially sent out, all Food Lion tweets on the matter had been deleted.

Twitter: @chewkiii