ESPN is starting to slip a little bit on their attention to detail. Yesterday on PTI, Kornheiser and Wilbon were talking about how Kobe Bryant will be doing an advice column in the LA Times. They talked about it, made some jokes, and Tony did say, “We don’t know if this is true or not,” but they were treating it very seriously.
Well, Tony, I know if it’s true or not. I 100% sure that it’s not true. How do I know this? Because the person who wrote the thing also wrote just below it “This was a joke.” That’s what tipped me off. I lack the resources of the ESPN research department, but I was able, through some of my own determination and sluething skills, to determine that this was not true.
Worldwide Leader, huh? In what, not being able to read? I understand that people make mistakes, and I’ve done some dumb things here, but… hey, I’m not ESPN. That’s a big one. And it’s not really that someone fooled them, either. The person at LakersTalk.net, where ESPN picked the story up, was just fucking around. It was not an attempt to pull a fast one. He was making a joke. It’s been up on the site for 7 days, and for six of those days, it has said, “This was a joke” directly underneath it. And ESPN just got to it yesterday.
Maybe it shouldn’t be, but it’s just so hard for me to believe that ESPN bit on this. Just completely asleep at the wheel in Bristol. I’m sure that the LakersTalk.net person expected only a few chuckles from his/her own readers, and that was it. It must’ve been a hell of a shock to see it on ESPN a few days later. I’m expecting a PTI bit next week about how Flip Saunders owns a turtle that’s capable of writing letters sometime next week.
DookieStyle
The worldwide leader sucks.
June 8, 2006 at 7:45 am
shoals
this would forever ruined pti for me, even if our intrepid hosts didn’t personally make the mistake. but it came on the same show as that awkwardly earnest exchange over fascism in soccer and the safety of j.a. adande, which reminded me why i still watch that thing every single day.
June 8, 2006 at 10:32 am
Jamie Mottram
I’ve seen the PTI research room — about a dozen guys in a cramped space with those cardboard head cutouts covering every inch of wall space — and I’m pretty sure they have about a dozen more guys researching sh!than The Mighty MJD does.
Regardless, I really like the show and love this blog.
June 8, 2006 at 10:38 am
unc_samurai
It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the off-camera staff at ESPN think that the vast majority of their viewing audience do not read sports blogs. They might be right. The fact that this is a still relatively undiscovered medium means that you can pull good ideas without giving credit where credit is due, and 99% of the time no one will notice – expect when you’re Colin Cowherd. But for every one of us that knows what’s up, there’s 20 guys and gals watching Sportscenter or PTI and hear something clever and go, “those guys at ESPN are pretty funny”.
June 8, 2006 at 3:40 pm
seamus
Does it bother anyone that they’re spending any time at all debating a topic that they “don’t know if it’s true or not”? Why not just make some shit up entirely?
“We don’t know if this is true or not, but Brett Favre and Peter King get their roofies from the same dealer in Chicago.” Discuss.
June 8, 2006 at 4:51 pm