WE GET THE GREEN LIGHT TO INTERVIEW FISH

We’ve got an update as to our effort to pose some questions directly to Mike Fish of ESPN.com regarding his curiously-timed report regarding the link between a former Steelers physician and Human Growth Hormone. Our belief is that ESPN timed the release of a story that direct implicit allegations of cheating against the Steelers to coincide with the team’s attempt to secure a berth in the Super Bowl -- and that ESPN likely would have held the thing until the eve of the Super Bowl if ESPN was sufficiently confident that the Steelers would win. (In that regard, ESPN must not be listening to its experts, who seem to agree across the board that the Steelers will advance.) As it turns out, we’ll be interviewing Fish (and possibly others at ESPN), at a minimum by e-mail and possibly by phone. On one hand, doing it live is preferred, because the subject of the interview is forced to give extemporaneous answers, and might say something truthful and candid that, in hindsight, might not have been said. On the other hand, there’s no potential for claiming that comments were taken out of context or that the subject misspoke if there was more than enough time to write the words and read the words and rewrite the words and read them again and rewrite them again if needed. Also, we caught a glimpse of Mr. Fish during Friday’s Outside The Lines. His comments on the Steelers-HGH link were curiously brief, and we found it odd that he used his limited time to emphasize the fact that doctors with other NFL teams had referred non-athlete patients to Dr. Rydze for HGH therapy. “One of the things that was fascinating is that at least four physicians who are tied in to sports teams, Major League Baseball, the NFL, and in some cases both, were referring patients, not athlete patients but patients, to Dr. Rydze to be treated with Human Growth Hormone,” Fish said. “So it shows that team physicians even though their teams and athletes can’t use this, they’re comfortable enough sending their own patients to Dr. Rydze.” Our cynical side (which implies incorrectly that we have a non-cynical side) makes us wonder whether the league office expressed to ESPN, a major broadcast partner, concern over this “once is an accident, twice is a trend” phenomenon of unveiling stories with actual or implicit allegations of cheating focused on a specific NFL team only a handful of days before the team in question will play in a key postseason game. Said one league source, “ESPN is trying to make a ratings grab by bringing back old stories that no one paid attention to the first time around and make a big deal out of them at playoff time. They planned to do the same with the Pacman piece hoping that Dallas would be a Super Bowl contender. When they missed the playoffs it took away some of the luster. “The NFL has to be pissed that one of their ‘partners’ is trying to ambush them and sully the shield with this type of journalism.” Meanwhile, although ESPN has streamlined the alphabet junkyard that used to be its web site, Fish’s article can’t be found without resorting to the search box. It’s not on the NFL page and, though viewers were invited to read Fish’s HGH report on the Outside The Lines page, it’s simply not there.