The St. Paul Saints, an independent baseball franchise that plays in the American Association, probably want a mulligan on this stunt.
On March 12, one day after the brackets for this year's NCAA tournament were revealed, the Saints - who have become known for pulling off some very wacky promotions in recent years - tweeted out their latest promotion for March Madness. Think of it as Warren Buffett's billion-dollar promise, but with a lot less money at stake.
This seemed like a safe bet at the time, since this ultimate sports upset had never happened in the long history of college basketball. Even people who entered the contest didn't think anything of it.
And then, on Friday, the No. 16 UMBC Retrievers did the impossible and eliminated Virginia - the tourney's top seed overall - with a stunning 20-point victory, becoming the first 16-seed to ever knock off a No. 1.
Once UMBC began celebrating, the Saints' contest gained steam as Twitter discovered it. As of Saturday afternoon the tweet had been re-tweeted over 17,000 times - and the internet quickly let them know it was time to pay up.
To their credit, the Saints announced Saturday that they will be going through with the giveaway. They'll stream the draw for the $10,000 live on Facebook this coming Tuesday at 1 p.m. CT.
"Someone on our staff, who shall remain nameless, brought this idea to me and said it was a foolproof promotion," Saints executive vice president/general manager Derek Sharrer said. "Now, thanks to this former staff member, I mean, this creative genius, we are going to make someone's day by giving them $10,000."
The Saints are no strangers to engineering crazy publicity stunts, as their ownership group includes Mike Veeck - whose father, Hall of Fame MLB owner Bill Veeck, all but invented the wacky sports promotion - and legendary comic Bill Murray.