Pro Football Talk is Wrong - and ESPN WAS right!

I had to revive this old puppy today - and promise to keep it moving forward. Minimum of one Steeler post a day - and more than one post a day if the Pirates, Panthers, or Pens inspire me.

The good news is that I will have time to do what I am promising. I was until today a regular reader of the sports blog PFT.COM - or Pro Football Talk. Like many pro football fans I had discovered the site during the infamous Chad Johnson melt down in the locker room during the playoffs following the 2005 season.

PFT had access to a source for their story that proved to be right - and many main stream sports media outlets felt a bit burned by a West Virginia attorney who ran his web site as a hobby.

Since then Mike Florio has risen to be an almost main stream media star himself - recently his site became part of the NBC Sports family and it seems to have beefed up its editorial staff a bit as part of that move.

I have been a pretty loyal reader of PFT over the last three plus years and while I cringe from time to time at some the more sophomoric stuff that shows up on the site, I confess to have found the site amusing if not always informative.

At times Mike pushes his own personal agenda to the edge - a while back he and I went back and forth over the contract Ben Rothlesburger signed with the Steelers that locked Big Ben up for the forseeable future at a price just down the salary tree from the likes of Peyton, Carson, and McNabb. I contended that this was a smart move - that there were not that many true franchise QBs out there - but Floria became obsessed with the idea that in signing Ben the Steelers had made the decision to let a pro bowl guard - Alan Faneca sign elsewhere.

He even went as far as to suggest that Ben had been greedy in signing his deal - that a true team leader would have sacrificed to keep a key team mate. I thought that Florio had some sort of axe to grind against Ben and specifically asked him to share what exactly his problem was.

Fast forward to our most recent Ben in the news incident. PFT was among the first to report the civil lawsuit. In fairness Mike did a very balanced job of pointing out that this was a civil matter - that no criminal complaint had been filed and that the young lady involved might have some issues.

But what makes a site - or a blog is not just the posting. In the case of PFT they have had a very high energy comment section - with folks jumping in and "trash talking" based on the article.

To say that some of these comments are asinine would be being to complimentary. What I realized this week in reading the mostly juvenile giggling of fans of other teams that these were people who actually enjoy the troubles of others - these folks just love it when a hero is found to have a flaw - and are willing to dispense with such trivial things as the truth - or the other side of the story - or the need to wait for confirmation before trying to humiliate a human being.

A side bar to this story was the decision by ESPN to not cover the story - which our friend Mr Florio felt compelled to rant about - something I did not quite understand until I realized the Floro and his followers want not only humiliation - but validation of that humiliation by everyone around them.

ESPN took the position that until some confirmation was offered - some validation of at least some part of the story, that it was not a story. This seemed to me to be based on three pretty basic principles.

1. We are dealing with a human being here - one with relatives and one with a reputation and we can wait for confirmation of the accusation before we begin talking about the "story". If the story is true - we have plenty of time to drag the fallen hero through the coals.

2. That this incident was different in important ways from others - it was a civl lawsuit which was filed over a year after the alleged rape. There was no other evidence or support - no police report - no affadavits from witnesses or friends confirming the incident. It is sad but true that it is entirely possible this whole thing is just a figment of this woman's imagination.

3. It is not unreasonable given both 1 and 2 above to wait for some formal response from the accused.

Unfortunately ESPN cratered and got in line with the rest of the media Wednesday evening.

The final straw for me was a post today by Florio reporting that none of Ben's sponsors had dropped him as an endorser. Now I may be wrong but this seems to me to be an odd definition of the news. By this standard we could also report that we have no reason to believe that Ben raped anyone today - or that the President did not beat his wife or children today.

What makes it newsworthy to report "no news" today.

Well I guess it comes from having fill up a blog and keep your new partners happy.

Then to make things worse, I go to the comments section and we have a couple of the Mensa members who make up Florio's finest trying to win the "best asinine post of the day" contest.

So long winded way of me getting this off my chest. I won't close with wishing Florio the best - he and others who revel and wallow in the bad news that comes along are sad pathetic creatures. Get a life - do something to make the world a bit better - and too help out someone who needs your help.

The Geek