ESPN blows call with sympathy for 'dirty' Harrison

Ignore What You See, Believe What You're Told, Continued: Monday, during ESPN's Steelers-Bengals game, Mike Tirico brought up James Harrison's head-hunting fines. An impressionist, Tirico painted Harrison with soft, sympathetic strokes.

After noting that Harrison feels the NFL is unfairly singling him out, Tirico added that even his soft-spoken teammate, Troy Polamalu, expressed support for Harrison.

Well, gee, Mike, thanks for the context. What else was Polamalu, a teammate and hard-hitting safety (Hey, that's both a modern redundancy and an oxymoron!) going to say?

But then Jon Gruden took over with an excited defense of Harrison, concluding that "he is not a dirty player!"

Really? So what do we make of those season-to-date clips on ESPN showing Harrison delivering concussion bombs, excessively and needlessly brutal shots to the heads of defenseless receivers and quarterbacks, with no attempt to tackle? Should we just ignore those?

Harrison, by the most forgiving standards, is a dirty player.

Harrison has provided lots of proof. You may recall two Super Bowls ago: With 3:26 left and the Steelers up, 20-14, Harrison knocked down the Cardinals' Aaron Francisco, punched him, then shoved him a few times. Who care if it was late in the Super Bowl, he was flagged and was lucky to escape ejection.

Off the field, he has issues, too, from being sentenced to anger management classes following an arrest for domestic assault, to his pit bull's attack on his son.

Yet, Monday night we had to hear that the NFL is picking on Harrison. What about Harrison's victims? Who cares?

Two weeks ago, Harrison threatened to quit because the NFL is picking on him. In the midst of a $51 million deal, he decided against that. Gee, tough call. But on ESPN, he's poor, poor James Harrison. On ESPN, it's more insults to those in the audience who choose to go with what they see rather than what they're told.

Clueless Joe hung 'round for much too long

Espn this week came to the sudden realization that it was time for its lead baseball analyst, one of the network's most important hires, to go after 21 years.

It would be disingenuous at this point to express sympathy for Joe Morgan, but it should be pointed out that he had an incredible TV run -- 25 years with three networks -- for a man who consistently fabricated baseball history, personal history, game analysis and eyewitness accounts.

If reporting fiction as fact were a firing offense at ESPN, Morgan would not have lasted one season, let alone 21. But in time, Morgan wasn't Morgan's fault, he was ESPN's. Maybe the bosses didn't know enough about baseball to know Morgan was full of it, or maybe they just didn't care.

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