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Fox, in a sly attempt at viral marketing of an upcoming FX TV show, planted humans dressed as dogs at baseball games over the weekend. Naturally, the cameras spotted the humans dressed as dogs, and the announcers spoke briefly about it. Slick! One problem – announcers Eric Karros and Thom Brennaman (yes, of Tim Tebow fame) tried really, really hard to play dumb in an effort to “trick” the viewing audience.

Eric Karros: “You think that’s a little warm right now?”
Thom Brennaman: “I’m sure there’s a reason, but when you see a guy dressed up like that at a baseball game, the question I always ask myself is, ‘what would prompt that?’”
Eric Karros: “That’s a dare. That’s got to be a dare, right? Is that a dare?”
Thom Brennaman: “What, you lose a bet?

Karros added another line, and then the game returned to action, at which point the announcers were silent for the next 30 seconds. About 12 seconds into the silence, you’ll see the promo for Wilfred appear in the bottom left portion of the screen. I envision Karros and Brennaman fist-bumping each other in the press box and nodding dorkily as if that were handled well.

Tim Burke at Mocksession has a nice breakdown of the other Fox games that also ran the deceptive advertising, and how the announcers handled it. Not surprisingly, Karros and Brennaman did the worst job. [video via Mocksession]