The ESPN ombudsperson, Le Anne Schreiber, posted earlier on Thursday a scathing critique of the network’s handling of the Spygate saga on May 13, the day that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell met with former Pats employee Matt Walsh.

And she appropriately lambasts the NFL Live crew, including Mark Schlereth and Cris Carter, that became convinced during the wait for Goodell’s post-meeting press conference that the freshly-released Walsh videos were used during the same game in which the images were shot.

Writes Schreiber:  “Schlereth imagined how such tapes might affect the outcome if film was shot, edited and utilized ‘during the course of a game’ — a practice Patriots coach Bill Belichick had consistently denied since last September, and for which there was no evidence.  Never mind.  The mere possibility that tapes could have been shot and used during a given game, with likely ‘amazing’ effect on game outcome, got Schlereth and then Carter so riled up that pretty soon they had convinced themselves of the virtual certainty of their speculation.”

You go, um, Ombudsperson. 

But there’s more.

“For an hour and 15 minutes preceding the Goodell news conference, this ‘SportsCenter Special’ was a runaway train of inflammatory speculation that had Schlereth and Carter placing asterisks on all the Patriots’ Super Bowl wins under Belichick.”

Schreiber also threw darts (as compared to javelins) at Sal Paolantonio and John Clayton.

“Even normally calm heads like John Clayton and Sal Paolantonio, ESPN reporters put on screen to comment from their remote locations, caught the fever.  Clayton in Seattle offered the information that, with current technology, you could now burn CDs from videotapes at halftime and use them during the game.  ‘They obviously had some value within the game,’ said Paolantonio, in Manhattan at the still-delayed news conference.”

The Ombudsperson likewise criticized ESPN for later giving Dolphins linebacker Joey Porter a platform for a semi-coherent bitch-session regarding the Patriots and cheating.

“Why treat one player’s angry personal opinion on a league-wide matter as news?  Why not solicit a wider range of opinion?  Those were the questions those who wrote me wanted answered.”

Amen, Ombudsperson.   

We recommend reading and digesting the entire article.  We’ve got a feeling that more than a few Patriots fans will be memorizing it.