ESPN Apologizes to Patriots on 'SportsCenter' for Citing Incorrect Report

During a late-night (or, depending on how you view it, early-morning) edition of SportsCenter on Thursday, ESPN apologized to the New England Patriots.

But it's not for what you might expect.

At about 12:20 a.m. ET on Thursday, ESPN anchorman Steve Levy took a few seconds to offer an apology to the Patriots organization for SportsCenter citing an incorrect report. In recent weeks, SportsCenter had cited a retracted 2002 Boston Herald report (via the Boston Globe) that the Patriots had filmed the St. Louis Rams' walkthrough practice prior to Super Bowl XXXVI.

In case you happened to be sleeping, the Patriots made sure to let everyone know they were the recipients of an apology:

Of course, the team would like a different mea culpa from ESPN.

ESPN's Chris Mortensen reported early on in the Deflategate scandal that the NFL had found that 11 of the 12 footballs the Patriots used in the first half of the 2015 AFC Championship Game were inflated two pounds per square inch below the requirement, leading many to jump to the conclusion that the team was guilty of deflating footballs. As ProFootballTalk's Michael David Smith noted, Mortensen recently deleted his tweet about the report.

[YouTube, New England Patriots]