meltdowns Page 108 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
![Last Night's <em>SportsCenter</em> Featured A Dwight Howard Story Plagiarized Word-For-Word From RealGM.com [UPDATE]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/Image_Not_Found_1x_qjofp8.png)
Last Night's <em>SportsCenter</em> Featured A Dwight Howard Story Plagiarized Word-For-Word From RealGM.com [UPDATE]
On last night's 10 p.m. SportsCenter, ESPN delivered "breaking news" about the Orlando Magic's desperate attempts to retain star Dwight Howard. Here's the full transcript of that report:...

Pac-12 Football In A Nutshell: Reporter Addresses Coach By Name Of Guy Who Left Ten Years Ago
After the madness of SEC Media Days, the other FBS conferences' pre-season football bazaars tend to be a bit more understated. That doesn't mean there aren't occasional weird moments, like earlier today at the Big 12 media day when Oklahoma State coach Mike "I'm a man! I'm 40!" Gundy was interrupt...

Joe Posnanski Won't Be Doing Very Many Interviews Or Readings For <em>Paterno</em>
Joe Posnanski is having a hard time coming by any good news these days. The latest? The book tour and media interviews for his woefully timed biography, Paterno, due out Aug. 21, will now be severely cut back....

Niagara Falls Columnist Is Really, Really Afraid Of Gay People In Hockey
Yesterday we brought you a column from the Niagara Falls Reporter by one Lenny Palumbo, and Lenny had some ideas about hockey and manliness:...
![CSN Chicago Brings Us More Locker-Room Dong, And This One Appears To Belong To Kevin Youkilis [NSFW] [UPDATE]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/Image_Not_Found_1x_qjofp8.png)
CSN Chicago Brings Us More Locker-Room Dong, And This One Appears To Belong To Kevin Youkilis [NSFW] [UPDATE]
Terry Francona once quipped about Kevin Youkilis's Greek God of Walks moniker: "I've seen him in the shower: he's not the Greek God of anything." It seems we may have the opportunity here to judge for ourselves, as this CSN Chicago locker room interview with White Sox pitcher Pedro Hernandez acci...

ESPN Hack Lynn Hoppes Copies Press Releases, Too
It's not hard to spot the biggest hacks in any newsroom. The biggest hacks are the reporters who rewrite press releases. Emphasis on the word "rewrite," since the laziest, most unimaginative journalist can typically muster the energy and self-respect to tweak a predicate or two. Even hacks don't wan...

Today In Insanely Homophobic Statements From Small-Town Sports Columnists
Oh jeez. This is the kind of column you read, and then you do your due diligence to make sure it's not a parody news site. It's not! The Niagara Falls Reporter is real, and Lenny Palumbo is a real person, and he really wrote this....

ESPNU Is Launching A Hip New Late-Night Program That Will Almost Certainly Be Awful
Once upon a time, ESPN2—then edgily dubbed "the Deuce"—launched with Keith Olbermann and Suzy Kolber as the anchors of SportsNight, its flagship program for young folk. (If the names Keith Olbermann and Suzy Kolber sound too old and safe for you, reader, think of them as 1993's analogues to today's ...

Jerry Sandusky Scandal Reminds Columnist Of That Time He And The Rest Of His Nebraska Town "Sorta Did A JoePa," Too
This handsome stalk of corn is a guy named Les Mann, longtime columnist for the Daily News in Norfolk, a town of 24,000 in northeast Nebraska. He's been following this Penn State scandal pretty closely, and now he has something to get off his chest. His story begins with a phone call from some "twer...

Jon Heyman Doesn't Want To Pay For Your Damn Baseball Knowledge
Seemingly wealthy CBS Sports baseball writer Jon Heyman really should know better to bring up money in a Twitter fight. After all, he's a fancy man who prefers the finer amenities in life—or so we've been able to surmise—and when he wants you to reveal certain tidbits of info that he'd otherwise hav...

Here Is The Mug Shot From Marshawn Lynch's DUI Arrest
The news has been making the rounds since it first got out late last night, but the San Jose Mercury News has the details on the arrest of the Seahawks running back, which happened early Saturday morning in Oakland, Calif....

Bleacher Report Has Stiffer Penalties For Plagiarism Than ESPN Does
We uncovered more than a dozen of examples of ESPN senior writer Lynn Hoppes copy-and-pasting from Wikipedia and he was not fired. Instead ESPN gave him a slap on the wrist, and he hasn't written anything since—maybe he was suspended, or told to keep a low profile for a little while....

Comcast SportsNet Gives Us Some Sage Advice About Ass
From tipster Doug comes the above screengrab, which was taken from a broadcast on Comcast SportsNet's Chicago affiliate. Amongst the clutter of the studio's backdrop are some very wise words concerning one's daily intake of ass. Some may be offended by this, but I for one applaud Comcast SportsNet ...

NBC's <em>Today</em> Hosts Michael Vick In-Studio, Confuses Him For Jerrod Johnson
NBC's Matt Lauer brought Eagles QB Michael Vick into the Today studio this morning for a conversation full of personal growth and life lessons and redemption. To call Lauer's questions softballs is an insult to softballs; his prompts were more like those weird-ass softballs they use in Chicago....

Chris Webber Refers To Ron Jeremy Instead Of Ron Burgundy During NBA Summer League Broadcast
Not sure what about this I like best: Webber making the mistaken Anchorman reference at the 22-second mark, the nearly 10 seconds of awkward silence until he corrects himself, or the minute-plus the rest the broadcast crew then spends laughing at him. It's a hard one....

Did ESPN Really Make Up An Entire Interview With German Striker Lukas Podolski?
We can thank our friends at Awful Announcing for this latest head-scratcher from ESPN. Yesterday, ESPNSoccernet published an interview Nick Bidwell ostensibly had with Lukas Podolski, a German soccer player. As you can see, if you click the link, that article is no longer available....

ESPN Says Lynn Hoppes's Wikipedia Problem "Was A Case Of Journalistic Laziness, And We've Addressed It"
We told you on Wednesday about ESPN's senior pizza correspondent, Lynn Hoppes, and his persistent habit of pulling material from Wikipedia....

ESPN Reports The Diamondbacks-Cubs Game Is Being Delayed By Snow
As far as we know, there is no snow at Wrigley Field on July 13. But we will update you if we learn that there is snow at Wrigley Field on July 13....

Lynn Hoppes Fails To Copy Quote
Last night, Pat Summitt received the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at the ESPYs. Our hero Lynn Hoppes was on the scene, dutifully transcribing every detail as ESPN Playbook's lead entertainment reporter....

ESPN Trots Out Matt Millen To Fumble His Way Through The Freeh Report
On a day like today, you can find any number of fine journalistic outlets that are covering the Freeh report in painstaking, intelligent detail. You can follow Sara Ganim, who has already won a Pulitzer Prize for her diligence on the Sandusky scandal. Or you can follow Yahoo's Dan Wetzel, who is p...