Thanks in large part to our friends at WIP and ESPN Radio in Philadelphia, we’ve developed a surprisingly large following in the City of Brotherly Love.

But there’s a certain host at WIP, a man named Howard Eskin, who doesn’t like us.  Not one bit. 

And that’s fine with me.  Though I’ll admit to a few Costanza-esque tendencies, I shed long ago the desire to have everyone like me.  (Besides, I’m a lawyer.  At least half the people I deal with automatically are predisposed to hating me.)

We don’t listen to Eskin’s afternoon show on WIP, but our own Taco Bill (who lives in the Philly area) called me a few minutes after 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday to tell me that Eskin was ripping the site.  Eskin does it from time to time; as I told Bill, as long as he gets the domain name right, Eskin can say whatever in the hell he wants.

But Bill also said that writer Buzz Bissinger, who might already be as famous for his anti-blog tirade from last week as he ever was for his award-winning writing, would be a guest on Eskin’s show.  And so we called up the WIP site and listened to the show.

For more than two hours, Eskin teased Bissinger’s visit by touting Bissinger’s appearance from last week on Costas Now, during which Bissinger went ballistic on Deadspin’s Will Leitch.  And since we know that Eskin has slammed us from time to time on the air, we figured that he’d use his visit with Bissinger as a way to get Buzz to throw a log onto the anti-PFT fire.

When the interview began, Bissinger promptly threw water on Eskin’s gushing regarding the HBO segment by acknowledging (as Bissinger has elsewhere) that his profane attack on Leitch crossed the line, and diluted his message.  Eskin, despite previously stating that Bissinger’s segment on Costas Now was “sensational,” agreed with Bissinger’s assessment.

And then, as the discussion continued, Bissinger said that he’s done plenty of research over the past week regarding blogs, and that he has learned much about them.  “ProFootballTalk is a good sports information blog,” Bissinger said, by way of example and without prompting from Eskin.

Of course, that prompted Eskin to roll out his pair of talking points about us — that we had Terry Bradshaw dead and Andy Reid resigned.

That’s it.  That’s all Eskin’s got.  And so we finally need to address those two points, once and for all.

As to Bradshaw, we acknowledge that we posted on January 25, 2007 that we’d heard a rumor from multiple sources that the Hall-of-Fame quarterback had died.  We posted the rumor at 3:13 p.m. EDT.  Thereafter, we promptly contacted one of our sources at FOX, we learned that Bradshaw is alive and well, and we posted that fact seven minutes later, at 3:20 p.m. EDT.

Though Eskin attributes the rumor solely to us, he doesn’t know (or conveniently has ignored) that the rumor was reported by two “real” media outlets in Shreveport, Louisiana:  KTBS and KSLA.  “One theory as to how the rumor got started,” said KTBS at the time, “was that a local radio station reported a wreck on the Terry Bradshaw Passway — part of the Inner Loop — and that was misunderstood to say Bradshaw had passed away.”

With that said, we seriously erred in posting the rumor before calling our contact at FOX.  If we had done that, we could have written one story on the matter, which would have explained that there are rumors that Bradshaw had died, and that the rumors aren’t true.  We learned a valuable lesson that day, and since then we have stayed away from any and all rumors relating to matters of life and death (such as, for example, the rampant rumors from one day last year that Pats linebacker Tedy Bruschi had kicked the bucket).

As to Reid, we reported on October 3 regarding the existence of rumors that he’d step down, possibly during the season.  Later that same day, we posted the following from A.J. Daulerio (then of PhillyMag.com and now of Deadspin):   “It’s been a constant rumor all year, but after Sunday night’s loss to the Giants, sources close to Andy Reid and the team say there’s a strong possibility Reid may get off the sidelines sooner than expected.  All year, Reid’s family troubles have been taking a noticeable toll, and many of his players are biding their time until Big Red makes an announcement.  With Marty Mornhinweg already assuming much of the offense, Reid’s a lame-duck coach at this point, just poking around on the sidelines to keep his mind off of his woes.  The likely scenario is inserting Mornhinweg in the coach’s seat so Reid can ride out the rest of his contract as Executive Vice President of Football Operations, leaving him more time with his fractured family.”

Did Reid retire?  No.  Were there rumors he’d retire?  Hell yes.  Absolutely.  Without question.

The irony of this is that, only thirty minutes before he was bashing sites like PFT for spewing without accountability rumor as fact, Eskin was engaged in some of the most irresponsible — and defamatory — rumor mongering we’ve ever heard. 

Regarding the Marvin Harrison situation, Eskins had this to say:  “I have heard many things about Marvin and I am shocked.  I don’t want to get into it but it shocks me.  I’ve heard too many things, I heard things which shocked me. 

“I do know this,” Eskins added, “somebody he knows had $10,000 confiscated.  He went back to the police station and said, that’s my money. . . .  Two detectives have told me that.  I don’t want to get into it any deeper.  Doesn’t that present a lot of questions to you, too?

“I’ve heard things.  You’d like not to believe the things you hear, because . . . he has been portrayed as a poster child of the NFL.”

Eskin provided no facts, no details, no substance.  Instead, he hid behind “things he’s heard” and painted a very sinister portrait of a man who to date has never been charged with a crime.

How are those statements from Eskin any different from the worst of the stuff that bloggers post?  Should Harrison justifiably be livid of this generalized assassination of his character and reputation by Eskin?

We welcome the comments and input of PFT Planet, especially those of you from our Philly chapter.