ESPN Plagiarizes ProFootballTalk

One of the biggest ones was Vince Young's wonderlic score. I was in Indy covering the combine when that one broke and every single writer in the media room had PFT up the entire time.

They also had that Houston was going to take Mario Williams over Reggie Bush with the No. 1 pick in the draft and the story got enough play that ESPN and the NFL Network were breaking into coverage (this was the day before the draft) to dispute the report. About two hours later, the Texans had Williams signed.

Those are two I remember. There have been a lot... They've also gotten a lot wrong... But again, it's a rumor site. It doesn't claim to be a news site. People who treat it as such are idiots, but if there's a rumor up there about a team you cover, you're not doing your job if you don't investigate it.

 

They get more wrong than right. I'd bet that was an absolute fact. And whoa!!!! They got the news about Vince Young's wonderlic score. Stop the presses!

And I will never dispute the site's value to beat writers. Hell, I still read it, but I have expectations. I know what to expect and what not to expect. I expect a lot of links to stories I might be interested to read. I also expect a lot of unfounded rumors that nearly always get proven wrong. And I certainly do not go there for breaking news.

 

It used to be a rumor site now he thinks he is a journalist. Florio panders to agents and then rips others who do the same thing.

What rumor is up on the site right now?

 

He's saying Larry Johnson might go to the Patriots, which Michael Lombardi reported late yesterday afternoon.

 

He's also saying LJ might go to the Redskins. Next, he'll have LJ back playing with Penn State.

 

So because I'm getting tired of calling a squatty black quarterback Fat Albert or an Italian-American football writer Pastabelli, I'm going to continue to publish my falsehoods about employees and officials and steal from working journalists but I'll just call it a "rumor mill" -- because, you know, that's all it really is -- and then I'm going to sit back and see if I don't get any shouting outside my door or a letter in the mail.

 

Exactly right.

 

In the last few years, ESPN.com has floated much crazier NFL rumors than Pro Football Talk.