The Sunday before the Super Bowl tends to be a pretty uneventful day for NFL teams — yes, even with the Pro Bowl taking place. However, the Chicago Bears were treated to an unexpected surprise on Sunday morning when their Twitter account was hacked.
The hacking began when an unusual tweet was sent from the Bears’ official Twitter account announcing that the team was under new ownership. Here’s what it looked like:
The tweet got deleted but here’s a screenshot of it (the account most likely got hacked) pic.twitter.com/MJZ2WlyKNg
— Miguel (@mac78251) January 26, 2020
Fans and the media were left extremely confused. The Bears are owned by Virginia Halas McCaskey, who inherited the team from her father George Halas in 1983. McCaskey is 97 and currently the longest-tenured owner in the NFL.
As many expected, the Bears have not been sold. Their Twitter account was simply hacked, and the party responsible boasted about it in an ensuing tweet that the Bears had to delete several times after the hackers kept sending it.
They also just tweeted this. pic.twitter.com/d5cxS6e9uP
— Coach Conway (@Danway04) January 26, 2020
A Detroit Lions fan account then made a funny joke about the hack, and the Bears (or the hackers) had a solid response.
Done for 1$https://t.co/ecgYybojn1
— Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) January 26, 2020
This isn’t the first time we have seen questionable Twitter activity regarding an NFL team owner, and it’s a reminder that athletes and celebrities aren’t always lying when they claim their accounts were hacked. Clearly it does happen.
