The following piece is satirical in nature and not meant to be taken seriously. In case you couldn’t figure that out.

The Crimson White has been asked to return one of three national awards for investigative reporting amidst several accusations of the absolute fabrication of its best stories, officials within the newspaper said.

The award in question, given for staff reporter Taylor Holland’s story, “Saban a cyborg, runs on Oatmeal Creme Pies,” was awarded in 2009 for what the prize committee called an “unwavering dedication to uncovering truth in stories related to Little Debbie snacks – cream-filled category.”

“My biggest regret is that I think we’ve really disappointed several of our most faithful readers,” Editor-in-Chief Victor Luckerson said. “There’s approximately a dozen of them, good people who are genuinely thrilled every day we publish, and they practically live on the news we give them. I know we let them down, and I couldn’t be more apologetic.”

Holland’s prize-winning piece first came under investigation during the process of writing another story for The Crimson White, when news editor Will Tucker first began drafting his tell-all exposé that detailed every one of the dark secrets the student newspaper was trying to hide.

“I took one look at that story, and I said to myself, something’s wrong here,” Tucker said. “No one can really question that Coach Saban is something other than human, but it didn’t make good sense for a robotic being to run on those Little Debbie snacks.”

Tucker said that the deeper he dug, the more troubling his findings became.

“It seemed like everything in the story was completely made up and treated as fact,” Tucker said. “The only real evidence I could find was the original submission of the idea for the story, which was sent to our webpage, and it came from a questionable source whose only given name was ‘Warlock.’”

Holland admitted that he probably should have spent more time checking the facts before he submitted the story for publication.

“In hindsight, the whole thing was a bit fishy,” Holland said. “But it seemed too good to pass up, and I still find it difficult to accept that anyone would submit an idea for a story in the paper based on anything less than solid fact.

“When something like this comes down the wire, all we can think about here is the prizes it can draw for the paper, and for ourselves as reporters, and we get blinded to things we’d more than likely see otherwise. I fell victim to a trap that is set for all journalists, something we at the paper call Pulitzer Passion. Not to mention I have a pretty one-track mind when it comes to Little Debbies.”

Luckerson said there have been some calls for his resignation, and others for the termination of Holland as a newspaper employee in addition to returning the prize, but says he believes that parting with such a noble addition to the collection of awards piling up in the Office of Student Media is punishment enough.

“Let’s face it, people are really exaggerating the severity of this offense,” Luckerson said. “I think it’s bad enough to take away one of the Pulitzers from the trophy cabinet, and Taylor and I will not be leaving this newspaper over a trifling issue like story fabrication.”

“I’m ready to just wash my hands of the whole thing,” Holland agreed, before trying to do so over a sink in the OSM, only to rediscover that those sinks no longer feature running water.

Efforts to reach Coach Saban for comment were routed to his answering machine, which is located somewhere near his android ears.