ESPN’s ‘Outside the Lines’ Seems to Have Its Limits in Covering Football Scandals

On Twitter, Alex Marvez, the sharp lead pro football columnist for FoxSports.com, points to an intriguing story by the blogger “SPORTSbyBROOKS” on a cover-up by ESPN’s usually excellent investigative program, Outside the Lines, regarding network personality Mel Kiper’s questionable involvement in a summer 7-on-7 football program, an activity banned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

You can read the story at http://www.sportsbybrooks.com/espn-covers-up-mel-kipers-sec-banned-activity-29739.

Marvez is a journalist worth following. Part of the reason may be that he has a background in covering the pro wrestling industry, which equips him with a well-tested bullshit detector.

On the general subject of ESPN and Outside the Lines, I have given them credit for important early investigations of tainted and commercially conflicted research on brain injuries by National Football League-affiliated doctors. But ESPN, which was once ahead of the curve on this national health scandal, has been playing lackluster catch-up lately. I wonder why. More on this subject here as we move along.

 

Irv Muchnick

NFL Hall of Famer John Henry Johnson Had Alzheimer’s at Age 59

John Henry Johnson, a running back from the 1950s and 60s who is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, has died at 81. The San Francisco Chronicle obituary is at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/05/SP5L1JPQ0R.DTL.

According to the article, Johnson was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1989.

In 1989, John Henry Johnson was 59 years old.

 

Irv Muchnick