Les Miles

[Danzig]

i didn't even know til just now that herbstreit played at osu. i knew he played somewhere.

did you read the ombudsman article i put up the link to? the lady who wrote it said that herbstreit should never have run that story the way he did. that it was irresponsible on his part.

[Danzig]

excerpts from her article:


As Herbstreit's later remarks would make clear, that information came not from "sources," but from a single, anonymous, uncorroborated source.

Herbstreit stood by his source, despite Miles' continued emphatic assertion that he was staying at LSU, until the ESPN college football analyst finally was forced by circumstances to concede his error the next day.

Given an anonymous source, who to judge by repeated on-the-record denials was not Miles, his agent or Michigan athletic director Bill Martin, and given the degree of at least slight doubt implied by "barring any unforeseen circumstances," why did ESPN go with a story that risked affecting outcomes -- the championship game and the job negotiations -- by itself becoming an unforeseen circumstance?

"Given that no deal is done until an agreement is signed, we could have tempered this one more than it was," Doria said. "In hindsight, we should have said something like, 'A source has told ESPN that Miles and Michigan have agreed on money and length of term, but no contract is signed, and Miles has to go to Michigan for a face-to-face interview with AD Bill Martin.' "

That would have been better, but we have been given no reason to believe it would have been any more true. All we know for sure is that ESPN's reputation as a reliable source of "scoops" has taken another blow. When viewers respond to the phrase "a source has told ESPN" with a "we'll see" attitude, as many who write me say they now do, it undermines the efforts of ESPN's entire staff of producers, editors and reporters

[Mortimer]

Originally Posted by Danzig

i didn't even know til just now that herbstreit played at osu. i knew he played somewhere.

did you read the ombudsman article i put up the link to? the lady who wrote it said that herbstreit should never have run that story the way he did. that it was irresponsible on his part.

Is the lady right?


Should he have reported it?


I don't know...maybe not...but all I'm saying regarding the report is it makes no sense to me he would report something like that unless he and his bosses felt they were on firm ground.

I'd say what has happened since then only reinforces it.