During a special division-round edition of The NFL Today, CBS showed even better video than Jay Glazer of FOX displayed earlier in the day of a sideline wall during a punt play. In the Glazer version, it wasn’t completely clear that a Pats player had tried to trip the Jets gunner.
In the CBS version, given that the game was televised by CBS and that the network has unfettered access to all sorts of different camera angles, the attempted trip is clear -- and the culprit is guard Ryan Wendell.
Casserly says that the league likely won’t do anything to the Pats because the players on the edge of the white stripe were offensive linemen, ready to enter the game. Casserly thinks Wendell could face discipline for the attempted trip, even though the incident occurred way back in September.
Meanwhile, neither James Brown nor Casserly nor anyone else pointed out that FOX had shown the video four hours earlier. We know that some media organizations opt not to give credit to a rival who reports something first if the media organization had the information in hand at the time the rivals report surfaced. (We don’t buy that approach -- if someone is first, they’re first. There’s no “I knew about it before you reported it” exception to the obligation to give credit where credit is due.)
In this case, it’s hard to believe that CBS was sitting on the video when FOX used it. The Sal Alosi incident happened more than a month ago. The $100,000 fine was imposed on December 30. It wasn’t a hot story on which CBS would have been working.
Instead, we think CBS pulled out its tapes of the Week Two game after seeing or hearing about Glazer’s report. If so, it was flat wrong to not credit FOX.