The World Wide Leader and the Week That Was

You thought the Mets had a weird week? How about ESPN?

• Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald said that ESPN showed constraint with Ben Roethlisberger
• Kevin Blackistone of FanHouse said that ESPN whiffed on their coverage of Ben Roethlisberger
• Deadspin wanted to know what Ben Roethlisberger is accused of anyways?
• Erin Andrews was videotaped naked in her hotel room. Did you hear? (more important, did you see?)
• Gawker has Bill O'Reilly (the "pervy flesh-peddler" he is) doing what the hypocrite does best...exploiting people by complaining about exploiting them
• Deadspin says CBS News did much of the same
• The one that got the most flak? The New York Post which is being blacklisted by ESPN, according to Deadspin
• The Big Lead parachutes into the Erin Andrews situation and doesn't even try to make it through Jay Mariotti's drivel (though Deadspin does)
• Deadspin has a great recap on the awful week that was for ESPN including: Being outbid on the LeBron James dunk tape, getting reemed by Dan Patrick, engaging in conspiracy-laden cover-ups, and referencing some "civil lawsuit protocol" to justify their actions. (H/T to Deadspin for inspiring this post)
• Oh...but ESPN did have time to tell us that LeBron James once smoked weed which is big news and Tommy Craggs of Deadspin can't figure out why (H/T Jay)

It wasn't all bad, however:

• The ESPN Chicago site crushed the Chicago Tribune in 3 months according to SportsByBrooks.
• The New York Times wrote about how ESPN is working to become the home team across the United States.
• Awful Announcing carried the announcement (which was not awful) that ESPN is going to follow up the ESPN Chicago success with three more local sites in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.
• And the NFL draft is expanding to 3 days of prime-time coverage according to Bloomberg. Not sure if this is good or bad. I don't watch after Day 1 anyways, so I'm guessing bad.