I've always thought that ESPN's been guilty of spinning stories wildly in order to fit whatever agenda they may have. For example, when they lost the BCS games to Fox, they turned into the biggest BCS detractors, and they've now backed off that stance since they reaquired the games. To their credit, though, they've had an ombudsman who hasn't been afraid to point out any hypocrisy. The latest article from their ombudsman (Don Ohlmeyer, who I believe used to head up NBC sports) is pretty fascinating:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/s...id=4844048

He pretty much takes the network to task for failing to critically evaluate Craig James' role in the Mike Leach firing. It's a pretty good read.

USFFan

Yes, he doesn't exactly tear ESPN a new ******* over it, but points out the obvious conflicts of interest and the clear pro-James/anti-Leach slant to ESPNs coverage. Thanks for posting this.

All of this is not new to me. I pointed this out at the time it happened...

The Ombudsman that ESPN has brought on to critique them has often been spot on, but ESPN uses the criticisms very little and more often than not feels the need to justify that their position is right.

I did feel that ESPN's coverage of the Mike Leach-Texas Tech saga was slanted towards Craig James and his son, with some items covered very little on air when they were more covered on other websites (ie. CBSSports.com). Mike Patrick sounded like a buffoon even attempting to discuss the subject on air. When he tried to discuss the subject, he definitely had his mind made up and often sounded like he was putting his foot farther in his mouth each time.

Now that mediation has been ordered in the Leach case, we'll likely never know the real story as Leach probably will get a buyout, neither side will admit fault, etc.

When you listened to any reports on ESPN about the situation, Leach was presumed guilty, and Texas Tech's knee jerk reaction in firing him so quickly never allowed him a chance to give any defense. I'm sure part of the firing was because of the personality conflict Leach had after the extension negotiations, but a big part of it was to placate Craig James, due to his status as an ESPN announcer, and the fact that all of ESPN immediately jumped on his bandwagon...

Would have been nice for him to mention ESPN announcers talking ad nauseum about Brian Kelly leaving all year long, instead of the fact that Cincinnati had a good football team. The day Kelly left, UC had a basketball game, and those game announcers did nothing but talk about the departure to the point that I had to put the game on mute.

Well BJ. You got to admit, ESPN's all-time favorite team, Notre Dame, had a lousy coach. The announcers needed them to get a good coach, so they've promoted Kelly as the replacement for the last 2 years to help them have something to talk about. They don't know diddly about teams that haven't been 'name' teams forever, and have no desire to learn anything about 'em. A good coach elevating a team they want in the polls is an abberation, and they can't abide that...

Funny thing is, ESPN is not even ND's network

Maybe they're pushing to become the ND network after NBC's contract runs out...