As you may have noticed, the above tweet is generating a lot of buzz online today. I posted that three days ago. It was a photo I found here.

Late Thursday night and early Friday morning it was brought to my attention that the tweet above was getting a lot of retweets and likes. It also was being featured in articles by many major sites across the web. This story started circulating even though the supposed error was already fixed.

So how does something like this happen?

Well, of course, the first important thing about this was my interest in finding out about the end zone. There is always a curiosity about the design of the field for the Super Bowl. Where will the logos be placed? Are there any special designs? One important question involves the end zone: What will it look like.

Because of that I made sure I was plugged in on as much as I can through Twitter and the Chris Creamer SportsLogos.net forum to see if people would have photos from the field. Sure enough, photos would start trickling in and that’s where I found the above photo.

Here is the interesting thing too. Leading up, only official photos of the field featured the properly painted end zone. They were properly cropped or didn’t include the other end zone in the photos. I was curious as to why that was.

Then I found the above photo. Not only did it show what the Broncos end zone would look like, it also revealed the other end zone. I was hoping they would have the Panthers’ end zone painted but instead I noticed the area had the Broncos’ markings on it.

Did they start painting the wrong end zone before realizing their error? Was it the crew just testing paint knowing the black end zone for the Panthers would cover it up? Did someone need a Snickers?

I’m not sure why there is a difference on which side the Broncos had their end zone. I thought that the home team was designated on a certain side but looking at previous Super Bowls, it doesn’t seem to have a consistent format.

Either way, I posted that on Tuesday not thinking that it would get much attention. Maybe a retweet but that was it. I knew it was an odd story but I didn’t think it would gather that much attention. I have no idea how this tweet, over two days later, would finally start getting people’s attention. The first retweet that might have started it was from Mashable’s Marcus Gilmer.

Soon, Bleacher Report and Pro Football Talk wrote a piece on it. When I woke up, CBS, Deadspin, the Daily Mail, SB Nation and even my own company Yahoo was on it.

It’s surprising. Two days later after the fact, the image goes viral and everyone is talking about it. And it all started in part with me just tweeting out an image I found (and I don’t know who took the photo) pointing out something a little odd that I knew would eventually get fixed.

But here we are in the Internet age. Viral things can come out of nowhere. This isn’t the first time it happened to me but this time, it’s real.