If a sports story breaks and ESPN doesn’t cover it, did it really happen? Jay Glazer stands by his story. Brett Favre denies it. ESPN refuses to report on it.

Jay Glazer of Fox Sports, who sports an impeccable record of being right, reported recently that Brett Favre shared intimate details of the Green Bay Packers offense with the Detroit Lions prior to their meeting earlier this year. Glazer stands by the story, despite a denial from both the Lions and Favre.

Now, even if Glazer is 100 percent right, Favre broke no rules. The interesting thing about this story is the fact that ESPN has gone out of their way to keep it off their airwaves. We all know that ESPN is usually all over speculation, but it seems that they will only be interested if one of their own reporters is the one that breaks the story.

Hell, ESPN will credit one of their reporters if he’s only talking about a broken fingernail. “ESPN’s Ed Werder reports that Jason Witten may or may not have a hangnail…” Does that sound familiar as a way of reporting? Of course it does.

But with this story, from an extremely credible reporter, ESPN wants no part of. According to ProFootballTalk.com, the story appeared nowhere on ESPN television or ESPN.com. They go on to speculate that ESPN is so afraid of losing access to Favre that they don’t want to touch the story.

ProFootballTalk has followed up on the report, saying that ESPN claimed to be unable to confirm the report, but as PFT pointed out, that never stopped them from hammering the story about the Patriots spy-scandal.

Then, PFT received communication from an unnamed ESPN employee that alerted them to an internal “Hot List” at ESPN which tells their on-air staff what they should be talking about each day. Under the section of DO NOT REPORT was this:

“Yesterday, FoxSports reported that Brett Favre spent 60 to 90 minutes before the Week Two game between the Lions and the Packers educating the Detroit coaching staff regarding the Packers’ offensive strategies. WE HAVE BEEN TOLD BY RELIABLE SOURCES THIS REPORT IS NOT TRUE. We did NOT report it yesterday. Today, the NFL responded to the report, saying even if Favre did this he did not break any league rules. We are NOT reporting it today, because that would mean airing the erroneous report. DO NOT REPORT IT.”

ESPN tries to claim that they often credit other media outlets when they break stories, though that’s often not true. But if they want to claim it is, shouldn’t they at least report on this?

As PFT pointed out also, this has become a story in and of itself. Are they really that sure that Jay Glazer is wrong that they want to be several weeks behind everybody else when they finally have to report this story?

ESPN has become a news maker as much as it is a news reporter. Rule one of journalism is to not be the story, but to report the story. ESPN has forgotten that. Glazer has earned the right to be believed, even when his sources publicly deny the story.

Do you expect Favre or the Lions to admit to this? No. They will continue to deny it. Ask yourself instead why someone from the Lions would make this up, and why Glazer would fall for it.

In my opinion, PFT was correct that ESPN is afraid of losing Favre as an ally. There is also the very realistic possibility that ESPN is planning on bringing Favre on board as an analyst when he actually retires.

ESPN has been accused by competitors of changing the face of sports media for the worse, and they have made their fair share of news with things like the ESPYs and Who’s Now (one of the worst ideas in the history of ideas).

But at this point, they’re just too big. There’s no stopping the Worldwide Leader. We have no chance of them being defeated or beaten. They have the rights to NFL, MLB, NBA, NASCAR, NCAA sports, tennis, golf, and anything else that might be called a sport. Those leagues pay far too much money for ESPN to get hurt financially. And because of those contracts, a competitor stands no chance.

The fact that Around the Horn is still on television, despite the fact that I’ve never met anyone who has enjoyed it (at least since Max Kellerman left). PTI is a good idea, but has become a cartoon of itself, and Mike and Mike at one point were fantastic radio hosts. Mike and Mike are no longer good at radio.

But this story really sums up ESPN and it’s “make the news” style. If one of their reporters didn’t break the story, the story didn’t happen. ESPN is a great concept, but outside of live sports, I just can’t watch them anymore. I will continue to link to their articles, however, because I still find their website to be the easiest to navigate and get stories from. Their on-air products are getting worse and worse, but there is no doubt that their production is still the best in the business (minus HBO).

If Fox Sports could get their act together, they could take over sports on television, but they are like watching high school football to ESPN’s NFL. But it’s there for the taking if anyone wants to take over cable sports.

UPDATE: ESPN reported that Favre denied the report. However, it’s unclear what they consider the story here. It appears as if they are only acknowledging the Favre/Lions/Glazer story to mention that Favre denied the story. Still a day late, a dollar short, and they are obviously only writing about this because it was a big enough story that Favre had to publicly comment on it. I’m sure they’re quite in shock at the WWL that a story they haven’t touched didn’t just vanish. We’ll see how many of ESPN’s shows mention this “story”.

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