Yesterday, the Deep Dish posted about the Lingerie Football League expanding into Green Bay next year, bringing the Chicago/Green Bay football rivalry to ... well, expanding it.
↵↵Also yesterday, the Chicago-based parody/satire publication The Heckler made this post, clearly based in humor, about the LFL.
↵↵Great PR for the league, right? Most of the time, the LFL doesn't get mentioned anywhere, least of all on Chicago-area sports websites, whether serious or humorous.
↵↵Well, the league doesn't think so. Brad Zibung, founder of the Heckler, got a cease-and-desist letter from an attorney named David S. Forman, representing the league, asking him to remove the post because:
↵↵You have personally made willfully false and misleading comments about my Client and its Players through your article titled “Lingerie Football League rocked by sex scandal as several players refuse to pose for Playboy,†posted on www.theheckler.com World Wide Web.↵↵
Today, Zibung posted this open letter to LFL Commissioner Mitch Mortaza, in which, among other things, he reminded Mortaza of the general PR rule: “Love me. Hate me. Just don’t ignore me.†and cited a Supreme Court case that generally:
↵↵afford publications like The Heckler a lot of leeway when it comes to material that is clearly parody or satire↵↵
This will be interesting to follow; the LFL may get more publicity out of this than if they had simply ignored it, and finally, the lawyer needs spelling lessons, because one of his demands was:
↵↵Immediately remove and/or retract any Internet postings on www.thehacker.com, including, but not limited, to the article titled “Lingerie Football League rocked by sex scandal as several players refuse to pose for Playboy.â€â†µâ†µ
"www.thehacker.com"? Nice try. That site doesn't even exist. Your move, LFL.