Patriots' Twitter promotion goes horribly wrong

A seemingly innocent promotion by the New England Patriots blew up in the team's face on Thursday.

The Patriots offered to thank fans for helping the team reach one million Twitter followers by offering them a custom digital Patriots jersey, with the user's handle on the name plate.

Unfortunately, a Twitter user with a racist slur in their handle was granted a digital jersey by the automatic system the team had set up. That tweet was sent out by the Patriots' account along with all the others.

After a public outcry, the team eventually caught on to what had happened and deleted the tweet, later issuing this apology.

Of course, that wasn't the end of it, as the Twitterverse continued to go after the team.

(h/t: Yahoo Sports)