This Deadspin story about a Cornell pledge who dressed up as Mark Sanchez and signed autographs as part of a fraternity prank made its rounds through social media yesterday. This could have worked, but the fraternity chose the wrong time and location for the ruse. The New York Jets held their summer training camp at SUNY Cortland in the summers of 2009 and 2010, and a Mark Sanchez autograph signing would not have been out of place in Ithaca. Even though the Jets did not train in Cortland last summer, I imagine most students (or Ithaca residents) would have believed the Sanchez imposter if he said The Jets were back in town. There is also a problem with location. Let’s be real – Mark Sanchez is not going to sit outside CTB flanked by two 19-year-olds. Maybe he will sit in the Statler lobby. Maybe he will sit in the Cornell store. Maybe he will sit at a table on Ho Plaza. But, he’s not going to sit by himself in Collegetown in Ithaca, New York. This may have been more effective if he sat in the Ithaca mall food court or outside Walmart. Both are highly-trafficked places where people might actually believe a celebrity would sign autographs. When I was at Cornell, I thought it would be fun to do something like this with my fraternity. We would pick someone to dress up like a musician or comedian who was known to be in town and go to the mall. We’d plant brothers throughout the mall in groups to act excited when our faux celebrity walked by (with his entourage, of course) and to run up to him to take pictures and sign autographs. To really get into it, we’d have a camera crew following the celebrity equipped with a boom microphone operator and mobile lighting guy. I wanted to see if we could get unsuspecting mall visitors to believe the faux celebrity was actually someone famous. I never got a chance to do this. I still think it would be a fun prank and I hope someone tries it.