Yahoo! Sports apologizes for story alleging Broncos cheating

By Jeff Legwold, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published March 5, 2008 at 8:44 p.m.

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In the end Broncos coach Mike Shanahan got exactly what he wanted from Internet giant Yahoo.

Yahoo posted a public apology to Shanahan on its website Wednesday for naming Shanahan in a story about cheating in the NFL. A Sept. 13 story had said Shanahan had hired someone to videotape San Diego Chargers practices and that the NFL knew the videotaping had occurred and took no action.

The apology read:

"We apologize for any embarrassment that the Sept. 13, 2007 Yahoo! Sports story 'Ancient Antics' has caused for Mike Shanahan. Yahoo! has retracted the segment of the story that asserted that Mike Shanahan was involved in cheating as the Denver Broncos coach. Yahoo! has stringent editorial standards in place to prevent this type of error, and we regret the lapse in our protocol that allowed this to happen.

Editors at Yahoo said the paragraph of the original story that had included Shanahan had been removed from the website and the archives on Tuesday.

Shanahan's attorney, Harvey Steinberg, said Wednesday night Yahoo had now done enough and Shanahan would take no further action.

"He appreciates the acknowledgement, the retraction and the apology by Yahoo and considers this matter over,'' Steinberg said.

Shanahan, Steinberg, had sent a letter dated Feb. 26 to Yahoo corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., demanding an "immediate'' retraction and apology from Yahoo for the original story.

The letter called the paragraph regarding Shanahan "completely untrue and without foundation.'' The letter also said "Coach Shanahan has never engaged in any such practice, let alone even discussed the possibility of any such activities. As a result, this article is defamatory and libelous.''

The letter also said Shanahan was not contacted to comment on the story before it was published.

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