This is by no means a defense of Scoop, but I saw the broadcast, and what Bob Ley said was something along the lines of, "Michael Vick broke the law" and Scoop's response was, "Well, yes, but speeding is against the law too, and we all know people who do it."
It wasn't so much a defense of dogfighting as it was the "It's not like he murdered someone" defense, which a fairly flawed argument in its own right.
Essentially Scoop has decided to fill the Ann Coulter role for sports journalism, and ESPN is happy to be his enabler, the same way that Fox, MSNBC and CNN are willing to enable Coulter. These cable news programs need someone to represent a completely ridiculous, often indefensible position, and play to the worst stereotypes of the groups they supposedly represent. Having someone like Jeff Chadiha express a logical and reasonable position like "dog fighting is brutal an inexcusable" doesn't give the network what it wants, which is on-air heat. So instead, Scoop comes on, and if he's not willing to actually cross the line (and take Portis' position that dog fighting is cool), he'll walk right up to it and put his toe across it. It's simply part of the intellectual rot of cable television "debate shows" and even OTL is not immune. Scoop's willingness to say anything to keep himself relevant isn't as insulting, in my opinion, as ESPN's attempt to frame "dog fighting" as a debatable issue.
