Apr

7

Former Sabres PR pro loved April Fool’s Day

Filed Under Sports PR 

So I saw this blog post in Slap Shots, the New York Times hockey blog, about a former Buffalo Sabres PR professional named Paul Weiland who loved sending out fake press releases on April Fool’s Day. While I could never see something like that flying at the places I have worked at, it was certainly an entertaining read. Weiland had successful jokes spanning from the 1970s through the 1990s.

“This was Paul’s favorite holiday,” says Gerry Helper, who is now the Predators’ senior vice president for communications but who got into hockey when Weiland hired him as an assistant 30 years ago. “He told me I was going to write all the releases except one, and that was the April 1 release. He did that every year.”

While the post details quite a few of Weiland’s great jokes, my favorite one is below because Weiland went all out in an effort to make his prank believable:

In the early ’80s, around the time WTBS had crowned the Atlanta Braves as “America’s Team” and the Dallas Cowboys were also referring to themselves by the same slogan, Wieland got the idea that the Sabres should be “America’s Hockey Team.” He had a graphic designer work up a cover of Time magazine trumpeting the Sabres’ new status with Gilbert Perreault’s picture on it. In the upper corner was a note that one could read President Reagan’s proclamation about the Sabres inside. Paul had actually written a letter to Mr. Reagan about some triviality, just to get a letter back on White House stationery with the president’s signature.

“A little cut and paste and some words, and he had worked up a proclamation,” Helper remembers. “Shortly after, I know Paul got a call from the White House and they told him, ‘We don’t want you to think the White House doesn’t have a sense of humor, but you can’t take liberties like that.’ He got into a little trouble for that one.”

Does anyone have any great April Fool’s Day jokes (sport or not) that they were a part of or knew of?

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