ESPN CONFIRMS BEN X-RAY REPORT

Though we’ve yet to find a report to this effect on the recently-streamlined alphabet junkyard known as ESPN.com, our friends at Rotoworld.com report that the ESPN bottom-of-the-screen crawl has been proclaiming that Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger had a second X-ray on his back/ribs earlier this week. Since all of the monitors in the media workroom are displaying only NFL Network (and we’re just fine with that), we sought and received confirmation from ESPN spokesman Bill Hofheimer regarding the content of the official crawl. (Not that we don’t trust our friends at Rotoworld -- we’re just trying to be responsible this week. For a change.) But the crawl doesn’t cite an internal ESPN reporter or any external sports news organization (such as, you know, the one that originally reported the news). The crawl doesn’t even include any version of the term “confirm,” a magic word that allows the ESPNs of the world to ignore that someone else initially reported the thing about which the organization in question is now reporting. Making this whole thing even more interesting to us is the fact that, late Thursday afternoon, ESPN’s John Clayton mocked our report via a voice message he left for Omar Khan of the Steelers (or, possibly, Omar Sharif of Hollywood). And Clayton made the call while sitting only five feet away from me. In a sarcastic, smarmy tone, Clayton asked Omar to let him know about Ben’s condition, since it looks like Ben might not be able to play on Sunday. I just smiled and continued to go about the business of typing whatever I was typing, knowing full well that at some point I’d be typing about this particular incident. Look, I’ve got no problem with someone looking down his nose at one of our reports. But we all know that if Clayton or anyone else at ESPN had broken the news of a secret Wednesday X-ray on a Super Bowl starting quarterback -- news that ESPN is now implicitly pawning off as its own -- it would have been plugged into the continuous loop of updates on every ESPN video, audio, and Internet platform.