ESPN-Gate: ESPN still out to lunch on Brett Favre story

ESPN is only media outlet not reporting Brett Favre story that he shared information with the Detroit Lions about the Green Bay Packers earlier this season when the two teams played. Jay Glazer said on the Jim Rome Show that he is "1,000" percent sure of his story. Here's The Sporting News' report:

After FoxSports reported on Monday that Brett Favre spent more than an hour debriefing the Lions coaching staff about the Packers' offensive strategies, nearly every sports news outlet in America picked up the story -- except ESPN.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel questioned the conspicuous absence of the story on ESPN early Tuesday. Mike Florio, a Sporting News contributor, received an internal memo from ESPN that instructs editors to steer clear of the Favre-Lions story.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel posted some of Glazer's comments on the Rome show, including this one:

Matt (Millen) was trying to get him to go hunting, Matt has a house down in Pennsylvania and Brett's up there in New Jersey, so Brett just happened to call back the week that they were playing the Green Bay Packers. Maybe it was coincidence, maybe whatever it is. Brett said, 'By the way, who are playing this week?-type of thing.' (Favre said) 'Oh, you are? You guys want any tips?' And then Matt hooked him up with the coaching staff and Brett...When Brett talks, he doesn't do anything in snippets. Brett talks...I've always said he's my absolutely my favorite person to ever sit down with in production meetings where I had done games at Fox because it's the world according to Brett and it's phenomenal. You sit in there and he just goes. That's what he did with the Lions' coaching staff.

Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times filed a story with the headline "Brett Favre's denial about tipping Lions rings hollow." Farmer wrote:

Favre wasn't asked about the report after Sunday's loss at Oakland, but before the game he text-messaged NBC's Peter King and flatly denied it.

Big surprise. I heard the same kind of adamant denial last spring, a month after Favre's tearful retirement, when I wrote that Favre's agent was poking around the league to see whether any teams were interested in trading for the future Hall of Famer.

Here's the Chicago Tribune's NFL writer Dan Pompei on Jay Glazer's reputation:

The man who broke the Favre story, Jay Glazer of Fox, is not a shoot-from-the-hip kind of reporter. He does not swing and miss very often, and he does not play fast and loose with the facts. In fact, people have told me they had heard rumors after the Packers-Lions game about Favre trying to prep the Lions.

The New York Post writes:

(The Glazer report on Favre) leaves one wondering why a network that beat us over the head with wall-to-wall coverage of Favre's fallout with the Packers and subsequent signing with the Jets would stay mum on this issue.

The New York Times' web blog "The Fifth Down" is even writing about it. How will Peter King, Favre's favorite in the media, respond? And will ESPN actually report this stuff?
(Updated at 10:00 p.m. 10-21-08)