So we were perusing the Twitter feed of Bengals receiver Chad Ochocinco to see if any of his recent entries reflected evidence of concussions symptoms (he has yet to post any messages exclaiming, “Hue!”), and we noticed an entry from the OCNN that ESPN and FanHouse.com personality Jay Mariotti has been arrested.
We then checked it out via Google, since we realized it was possible that the hit Chad took last night against the Eagles may have caused him to make a mistake.
But he didn’t.
Mariotti was arrested in Los Angeles for, per the Associated Press, on an “undisclosed felony charge.” The arrest following a “domestic incident"; the Los Angeles Times reports that Mariotti allegedly “got into an argument” with his girlfriend at a club in Santa Monica, and that there was “some type of physical altercation” at their apartment.
Ochocino, in a message directed to teammate Terrell Owens, wondered whether “they [will] crucify their own like they do us.” For now, the answer is no -- the incident appears nowhere on the ESPN.com website.
To further cement the link between the Mariotti arrest and the NFL and/or PFT, we took issue in the days prior to Super Bowl XLIII with Mariotti’s reliance on the old-school newspaper guy method of referring dismissively to “Internet reports” . . . in a column that he wrote for AOL.
UPDATE: The AP version of the Mariotti arrest story now appears on the front page of the ESPN.com site. Says network spokesman Josh Krulewitz in the article, “We’ve just learned of it and are looking into it.”
SECOND UPDATE: We’ve tripped over Roger Ebert’s farewell column to Mariotti, when Mariotti left the Chicago Sun-Times in 2008. Now we know why Chad Ochocinco referred to himself and T.O. as “Siskel and Ebert” during a sideline interview last night.
THIRD UPDATE: Our pal Brooks, citing an unnamed ESPN source, says that Mariotti could be done at ESPN. (We probably should refer to Brooks’ story as an “Internet report.”)
