Northern Illinois football coach fooled by fake verbal commitment on Twitter

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Right now, it feels vitally important that we try and search out brief moments of levity. Things aren't going great – it snowed in Chicago today, for example, WITHOUT EVEN ASKING – and we can't rely on the usual crutch that is sports to distract us from *gestures broadly.* If searching out moments of zen feels too arduous or naive to attempt right now, I wouldn't blame you either. But friends, you're in luck. Your search is over.

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The hero of our story is Patrick Flowers. Is Patrick a real person? I don't know and honestly who's to even say what's real at this point. But Patrick exists – someway, somehow. And more importantly, he exists on Twitter. A quick peruse of Pat's timeline would indicate that, actually, Pat is very real in the sense that he's a video game character. From a defunct game. That hasn't been updated since 2014. 

Remember: Patrick Flowers, the 5-star QB recruit from Joplin High School and ESPN's 84th-highest ranked prospect, also happens to be, you know, not real. It's critical that you keep this minor detail in mind because as it turns out, not everyone has been on the same page about our guy Pat. You see, Pat's been "announcing" scholarship offers on the TL, and two days ago he informed his 5,000+ (!!) followers that he'd gotten an offer to play at Northern Illinois. Congrats Pat! That's a good pickup by the Huskies. 

The only problem was that Thomas Hammock, who's actually the very-real, human coach of NIU, had never heard of Patrick Flowers. Hammock is the only person that offers scholarships, you see, and he didn't offer one to Flowers. So he did what any football coach/adult-over-55 on Twitter would do and bit on the prank hook, line, and sinker. Hammock PROMPTLY arrived in Flowers' – who is a video game character, remember – DMs: 

Not only that, but Pat's shenanigans earned himself a block from the HC:

Hammock eventually figured out that the recruit he'd never heard of with a video game avatar was in fact a recurit he'd never heard of from a video game, and was a good sport about it all:

- fin - 

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