Mitchell report saturates airwaves

USA TODAY, December, 2007 by Michael Hiestand

As ESPN showed a live shot of Jose Canseco showing up at George Mitchell's 2p.m. ET press conference Thursday, ESPN's Karl Ravech quipped, "It's officially now a circus."

But ESPN's six hours of coverage turned out to be earnest and largely devoid of breathlessness.

ESPN also had a tie-in: Fernando Vina, a Baseball Tonight analyst last season, is accused in the Mitchell report of buying steroids -- which ESPN noted. Said ESPN's Mike Soltys on Thursday: "We had no idea, but we'll talk to him about it. We aren't going to comment further at this time."

ESPN's strength, given that TV sports pundits often rally around what's supposedly obvious, was its diversity of opinion. Its legal reporters Roger Cossack and David Cornwell questioned whether the...