In an age where people in the newspaper industry scold blogs for jumping the gun on stories - which is true in many ways - you could say today it's the pot calling the kettle black.That's because the Boston Herald, the paper that broke the story that the Patriots had taped the Rams' final walk through before the Super Bowl, today admitted they never should have printed the story and that their sources were full of crap.
Whoops.
As you may remember, this story broke during Super Bowl week and was yet another distraction for the Patriots to deal with.
The Herald, and John Tomase, who broke the story, even stuck to their guns a week ago after no Rams walk through tape showed up after Walsh turned over his tapes to the NFL. But, as stated before, today they relented. Here's a part of the apology.
Prior to the publication of its Feb. 2, 2008, article, the Boston Herald neither possessed nor viewed a tape of the Rams’ walkthrough before Super Bowl XXXVI, nor did we speak to anyone who had. We should not have published the allegation in the absence of firmer verification.Yep, that's pretty bad. A newspaper prints a crippling story about its home team and totally misses. Good luck ever getting an interview with any Patriots players ever again, Boston Herald.
But it's also worth remembering that the Patriots still cheated numerous times by videotaping a whole host of teams. And Matt Walsh even admitted that he watched the Rams' final walk through and relayed a bunch of information to New England coaches. That's not as bad as videotaping the walk through, but that's still not good. So it's not exactly like this is the end of Spygate.
But it's definitely the end of whatever relationship the Herald had with the Patriots, and probably Tomase's career, that's for damn sure.
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