So I took a few hours off this afternoon to go to the golf course, because being miserable about being such a crappy golfer distracted me from being miserable about my son leaving for college. And at some point in the final few holes, I nearly fell out of the golf cart. For reasons unrelated to the consumption of alcohol.
I visited PFT, and I saw that MDS had figured out that the prominent player who, according to an article about former 49ers linebacker Chris Borland, allegedly advised incoming players at the 2014 Rookie Symposium to have a “fall guy” in their group was Cris Carter. The fact that the claim appeared in an ESPN article and the fact that Carter works for ESPN made the situation even more compelling.
The fact that a video of his comments still appeared as of this afternoon at NFL.com made the situation flabbergasting. The NFL apparently was flabbergasted, too, because the video was removed even faster than the league corrected the false ESPN report that 11 of 12 footballs used by the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game were two pounds below the 12.5 PSI minimum. (That’s technically accurate, since fixing an error in a matter of minutes is indeed faster than never fixing it.)
Now, Carter has apologized for his 14-month-old comments via Twitter.
“Seeing that video has made me realize how wrong I was,” said Carter, who apparently didn’t realize how wrong he was when the words were, you know, emerging from his mouth. “I was brought there to educate young people and instead I gave them very bad advice. Every person should take responsibility for his own actions. I’m sorry and I truly regret what I said that day.”
Carter’s apology creates a clear impression that he had no idea there was anything wrong with what he said before seeing the video. Which conflicts with the NFL’s claim that "[t]he league’s player engagement staff immediately expressed concern about the comment to Cris,” and that the statement from the NFC session “was not repeated in the 2014 AFC session.”
It’ll be interesting to see whether the guy who advocated the use of a “fall guy” ends up taking the fall at ESPN once the next wave of former players with big names is looking for work. At a time when some believe that ESPN is more ready than ever to do whatever the league wants it to do, there’s a chance the league will want ESPN to move on from Carter -- or that ESPN will decide to move on from him before the NFL has to ask.