There's a lot of folks who talk professional football who aren't in regular season form yet, either. Earlier this summer, ESPN's First Take ran a highlight of Dak Prescott connecting with new wideout George Pickens from training camp. The problem? The Cowboys had yet to hold a single practice yet and the highlight was Prescott finding Brandin Cooks down the left sideline from two camps ago. This next one might even be more egregious, even if it didn't happen a grand scale.
Fast forward to the ongoing preseason, where teams' local TV stations trot out their own broadcast teams to narrate the exhibition games. On the local Denver broadcast of this weekend's Broncos action, their team arranged an entire segment to talk about a star NFL player who wants to join the Broncos because they are on the verge of a Super Bowl run.
Everyone is fully aware that the Dallas Cowboys are in the middle of a contract stalemate with All-Pro defensive end Micah Parsons. The two sides haven't been able to reach an agreement as Parsons executes a hold-in, where he's at training camp but isn't participating in things that could injure him.
If you haven't guessed by now, the full-throated support of the Broncos chances were attributed to Parsons, via his weekly podcast. The problem? Parsons didn't say anything of the sort; his podcast for Bleacher Report isn't even airing right now. It was all made up by a Twitter troll, just like the one that got ESPN.
In the wide world of sports reporting, getting the scoop has now become more important than getting it right. But perhaps they might have noticed that there wasn't a single other outlet that was rolling with the news that a star player under contract was publicly waxing poetic about playing for a specific, different organization.
