Broncos coach Mike Shanahan can no longer deny it.  He is, we believe, a closet member of PFT Planet.

How do we know this?  On September 13, 2007, Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports reported that Shanahan “had been hiring spies to videotape the Chargers practices.”

But from September through October, November, December, and January, Shanahan didn’t react.

On February 23, we wrote an item that mentioned the Cole article.  And “in recent days” Shanahan has demanded a retraction and apology from Yahoo! via letters from his lawyer, Harvey Steinberg.

Coincidentally, Harvey Steinberg also represented Broncos running back Travis Henry in his 2007 battle with the league over drug testing.

Steinberg seems to be setting the stage for a defamation lawsuit against Yahoo!, by claiming that Cole’s alleged failure to contact Shanahan for comment constitutes “actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth,” either of which is a necessary ingredient in a claim for defamation brought by a public figure. 

Apparently, Yahoo! has taken notice.  The article no longer contains reference to the allegations in question, and the following paragraph appears at the top of the item: 

“Editors’ note:  We have eliminated a paragraph in this story that, upon review, does not meet the editorial standards of Yahoo! Sports.  We took immediate action to eliminate the content from our site as soon as we became aware of this matter.”

The prompt retraction by Yahoo! might be enough to placate Shanahan.  But if he chooses to file suit, he needs to realize that his coaching life would be an open book, and that Yahoo!’s lawyers would engage in aggressive discovery about anything and everything of an allegedly questionable nature that Shanahan might have ever done.  We’re not saying that he’s ever done anything questionable or otherwise (we don’t yet have the budget for a team of lawyers), but if he were to sue Yahoo!, the Internet giant would be entitled to dig into every nook and cranny of Shanahan’s life in order to determine whether the allegation is true and/or whether Shanahan has engaged in other activities that might have done equal or greater damage to his reputation.

Our guess is that the matter is over.  And, frankly, the problem might never had popped up if we hadn’t mentioned the five-month-old article a week or so ago.