Will real Mike Reilly please stand up?
Eskimos quarterback not behind Instagram account bearing his name
What is better than having one Mike Reilly?
Why, having two, of course. Except when it’s not.
As it turns out, the Edmonton Eskimos quarterback, reigning Canadian Football League most outstanding player and current passing-yards leader, is actually an impostor ...
When it comes to the realm of social media, at least.
Just not all social media. Confused?
So was he.
The real Reilly didn’t know at first why people were talking about his Instagram account, if nothing less than for the simple fact he doesn’t have one.
Well, not a genuine, authentic one, anyway.
So, apparently someone took the initiative to change that and created the account mikereilly13.
That means the nearly 9,000 followers who signed on to follow the profile bearing Reilly’s likeness, which is actually the current head shot used by the team on its website roster, have fallen victim to a phoney.
“It’s certainly not me, but good looking fellow, whoever’s posting all those pictures, right?” Reilly quipped, after having already taken to his verified Twitter account, @Rikester13, over the past week while the Eskimos were on a bye: “I’ve been getting asked a lot over the past few weeks so wanted to let everyone know: This is not my Instagram account. I have no idea who is running it, but it is not affiliated with me at all.”
He knows that. But the problem is others might not.
“I’ve never been on the Instagram,” Reilly said. “I’ve had guys on the team and random people asking me over the last couple weeks if that was me and I kind of laughed about it: ‘No, I don’t have an Instagram.’
“And then, I realized my wife started getting questions about it and there was thousands of people following me, so I just wanted to make sure that people were aware it wasn’t me because you don’t know what somebody else is going to post.”
And that can pose big problems for someone who is the face of a professional football franchise, without necessarily having full control over the voice that seemingly belongs to it.
“For sure,” Reilly said. “Whoever’s behind it, maybe they’ve got too much time on their hands. That’s fine, but anytime that something happens on social media, our team does a good job of making sure that people know where our official accounts are.”
While Reilly has seen the fake account, he doesn’t monitor what is posted on it.
“I don’t have an Instagram, my wife does, so she showed me the page of it, or whatever, and I was like, ‘Yeah, there’s almost 10,000 people that don’t know that that’s not me,’ ” he said. “If and when I do make an Instagram account, it will be posted on my Twitter and from the team, so until then, I guess that person gets to have a lot of fun.”
In this day and age of stolen identity and internet anonymity, there isn’t a lot of recourse for the quarterback to take, as far as he is aware.
“I honestly don’t really know, I don’t know enough about it,” Reilly said. “I don’t know if I’m just old school, or what? I know how to work Twitter and Facebook and things like that. I stay off of them, for the most part, but I think generally that blue check mark tells people if it’s official or not.”
He’s not the first and won’t be the last to have his identity hijacked on social media.
“I’m in these scrums with you guys enough to where I think people get a good read on what my personality is and what I do and don’t post,” Reilly said. “But at the same time, you don’t want to be misrepresented online because, again, there’s obviously 10,000 people that thought that was me.
“So if somebody that’s running that account were to post something crazy, I don’t want to have to sit there and defend myself. I wanted to get out in front of that, for sure.”
DANNEY SUED
Former Canadian Olympic bobsledder and ex-University of Alberta track and field coach Ian Danney is being sued over a performance-enhancing-drug suspension in the National Football League.
The Arizona-based trainer, who attended Jasper Place High School along with Pierre Lueders prior to moving on to the national bobsled program, was a trainer for Los Angeles Chargers defensive tackle Corey Liuget, who filed a suit earlier this week in Los Angeles seeking damages of US$15 million in lost wages, pain and suffering.
Liuget claims that without his knowledge or consent, Danney injected him with a substance banned by the National Football League, resulting in a four-game suspension he is currently serving after failing a drug test in March.
The suit contends Danney told Liuget he was using an over-thecounter anti-inflammatory for a foot injury, as well as another product, which required a prescription Liuget didn’t have.
He is eligible to return for the Chargers’ Oct. 7 game against the Oakland Raiders.
You don’t want to be misrepresented online because, again, there’s obviously 10,000 people that thought that was me.