ESPN Apologizes To Patriots For Citing False Spygate Report

“That story was discovered to be false and shouldn’t have been a part of our reporting”, Levy stated on SportsCenter.

“The Boston Herald regrets the damage done to the team by publication of the allegation, and sincerely apologizes to its readers and to the New England Patriots’ owners, players, employees and fans for our error”. They’re the kind of upstanding, rule-abiding organization that illegally films New York Jets coaching signals during live games.

And part of what has given Spygate perpetual life has been the spread of misinformation.

“On February 2, 2008, the Boston Herald reported that a member of the New England Patriots’ video staff taped the St. Louis Rams’ walk-through on the day before Super Bowl XXXVI”.

The original report by Mortensen has been cited as one of the factors that helped turn Deflategate into a nationwide scandal and many had hoped ESPN would issue an apology for getting the initial facts wrong.

The latest DGAD move (“don’t give a darn”, for this is a family site) was to tweet NFL broadcast partner ESPN’s apology for twice referencing a report about Super Bowl XXXVI in recent weeks.

A unusual thing happened early Thursday morning around 12:30 a.m. ET when SportsCenter anchor Steve Levy apologized to the Patriots on air for a mistake made in a previous show. “We apologize to the Patriots organization”.

Speaking of things buried in obscure locations, the apology appears nowhere that we can find it on the front page of ESPN.com or the ESPN.com NFL home page or the ESPN.com Patriots page.

“Some would say that the filming of the practices earlier, that that does qualify as cheating, which is certainly something that’s part of the Patriots’ history”.

In the wake of the breaking Deflategate scandal, in which many accused New England of deliberately deflating footballs in last year’s AFC Championship game, ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported 11 of the 12 Pats’ footballs were underinflated by a full 2 pounds per square inch.