The New England Patriots have issued an apology for one of the biggest Twitter backfires EVER -- when the team honored it's 1 millionth follower ... who happened to have a SUPER RACIST handle.
The NFL team had planned to celebrate the 1 millionth follower with a special piece of team art which would be tweeted out from the team account. Seems the team already had a template in place which would auto-fill with the 1 millionth follower's name.
Problem is ... that follower's Twitter handle turned out to be "IHATEN**GERSS."
No one in the Pats organization caught the problem ... and team's account RETWEETED the congratulatory message. Oops.
Now, the team is issuing an apology ... saying, "We apologize for the regrettable tweet that went out from our account. Our filtering system failed & we will be more vigilant in the future."