From the perception becomes reality department: The long-refuted, yet often repeated, accusation that, as part of Spygate, the Patriots taped a Rams walkthrough prior to the Super Bowl in 2002, has cropped up in ESPN's coverage of Deflategate recently. The network has apologized for continuing to report it as fact.
On "SportsCenter" at about 12:20 a.m. Friday morning, ESPN issued the following apology, via anchor Steve Levy:
“On two occasions in recent weeks, SportsCenter incorrectly cited a 2002 report regarding the New England Patriots and Super Bowl XXXVI. That story was found to be false and should not have been part of our reporting. We apologize to the Patriots organization.”
The taped walkthrough report was originally in the Boston Herald, which eventually apologized and issued a retraction back in 2008.
The two occasions the ESPN apology referenced were in the past week when it ran on on-screen crawl of "Notable Patriots Controversies" and cited "Patriots filmed Rams final walk-through before Super Bowl XXXVI" and when Sports Center anchor Hannah Storm said, “Some would say that the filming of the practices earlier that that does qualify as cheating, which is certainly something that is part of the Patriots history.”
Storm later clarified her comments but didn't apologize.
The Patriots tweeted an acknowledgement of the ESPN apology: