Arizona Basketball: ESPN could face lawsuit for Sean Miller report

On his show today, Dan Patrick talked about a possible lawsuit between Arizona and ESPN after ESPN corrections. Sean Miller’s fate at Arizona Basketball to be discussed by the Arizona Board of Directors.

Dan Patrick reported on his show today that the “Mother Ship” got the dates wrong, but maybe it wasn’t Arizona Basketball head coach Sean Miller talking on the wiretap.

Patrick also had Pat Forde from Yahoo Sports on his show which once again confirmed that there was no Sean Miller information that they saw in the FBI evidence they reviewed for their post. Deandre Ayton came up in the conversation with regards to dates, and he said that ESPN had issued apologies. He said there was a lot of speculation on the report.

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That’s funny because all we just saw were corrections, not any apologies. Patrick said the “apologies” focused on the timeline issues, which we knew.

Patrick goes on to say that a lot of the Arizona Media is going to bat for Sean Miller, that it couldn’t have been Ayton, and that it could have been a different coach even (not Sean Miller.) “It’s early, but if you’re Arizona do you sue ESPN if this is the case?” said Patrick, “Now, understand this. You just lost Shaq’s son, he decommited from Arizona because of this. Now that’s a big recruiting loss because you lose the son, but you’re also losing Shaq being around the program — This is big! — ESPN has to be buttoned up with this if you are reporting this and now all of the sudden a couple of apologies.”

Uh, yeah, completely. Then Patrick admits how bad it could get for ESPN, “Can you imagine if you have to come out and say, ‘On second thought that wasn’t Sean Miller’? He said it seemed like a movie script because you have a top five coach and a top five player.

Patrick’s co-host Andrew McLovin agreed continued to speculate about a lawsuit, “It seems like a lawsuit, but if they did a lawsuit, then doesn’t Arizona have to open up all its books about everything and maybe risk some other violation?” McLovin brought up deflate-gate and that Brady’s phone was now under scrutiny, but Patrick didn’t agree that should be allowed by a judge, but there is a risk more could be exposed.

Here is Dan Patrick segment on Arizona Basketball and Sean Miller possible lawsuit material:

As far as apologies, there is only one apology we saw (could have missed the other), and that was after the ESPN announcers for the Oregon game mistakenly said that Sean Miller had been relieved of his duties.

According to USA Today‘s Nick Schwartz, ESPN issued an apology, but we cannot find it except for in this report:

"ESPN explained in a statement that the report had not been “properly vetted.” “We apologize for the regrettable error. The information was not properly vetted via our news and reporting standards, and the production team worked quickly to correct the mistake.”"

Bloomberg’s Chris Dolmetsch just reported that the Feds aren’t so happy with the latest leaks:

"Defense attorneys denied that they were the source of the leaks and said the judge should investigate further. Michael Schachter, a lawyer for former Adidas AG executive James Gatto, said he had raised concerns with prosecutors that they had designated too many documents as confidential and urged Kaplan to push them to see if law enforcement was the source of the leak.Kaplan told both sides to expect a revised order on procedures for confidential documents in order to not jeopardize the probe or a fair trial.“This stops now,” the judge said, “wherever it came from.”"

Bruce Pascoe reported a conversation with Arizona President Robbins saying there are a lot of moving parts. Maybe they are getting together a lawsuit? Who knows, but interesting none-the-less.

"UA president Robert Robbins, reached after playing in Wednesday’s Cologuard Classic pro-am golf tournament at Omni Tucson National, said the university was “still working on things.” He said he had “no idea” the regents announced the meeting.“It’s a lot of moving parts,” he said. “We’ll have more to say later.”"

Further information came out today from Biz Journals about the Arizona Board of Regents, here is what was reported:

Must Read: More on Arizona Basketball from ZZ..

ABOR will meet on Thursday to discuss Sean Miller’s fate. Maybe they are waiting for a bit more shakeout? Beardown Y’all! Let’s at least stay strong as Arizona Wildcat Nation, can we just do that?