Panther Lair pounces on ESPN source

The Panther Lair showed its teeth Thursday after fans on the Pitt sports news site began to question whether a man described in an ESPN.com article as a former Pitt football player had ever actually played for the team.

The ESPN.com article quoted a former Pitt player, Joe Cosgrove, in an article published on its site Wednesday. But some users soon noticed that there were no official records that Cosgrove ever played for the Panthers in a regular-season game.

Since Panther Lair users began to challenge Cosgrove’s claims, his Facebook and Twitter accounts have been deactivated and his LinkedIn profile has been made private. 

In addition to these changes, a claim that Cosgrove won two varsity letters while playing Panther football has been removed from his LinkedIn profile. The same claim has been removed from the biography posted on the website for his company, Pentec Health, which is based in Boothwyn, Pa.

In ESPN’s original article, which was published Wednesday, Cosgrove said he stands by former Pitt head football coach Todd Graham.

When Pitt fans first noticed the article, they began to express anger at Cosgrove for supporting former Pitt head coach Graham, who abruptly left Pitt in December 2011 to become Arizona State University’s head football coach.

When Graham prepared to leave for ASU, he had then-Pitt director of football operations Blair Philbrick forward the message to members of the football team, informing them of his decision. This choice not to tell his players directly has generated widespread criticism among college football fans, players and officials.

Philbrick was the director of football operations at the University of Tulsa when Graham was the head football coach there in 2010. He filled the same capacity at Pitt under Graham in 2011. According to his LinkedIn profile, Philbrick is now corporate executive coach at Pentec Health, where Cosgrove holds the title of president and CEO.

When the ESPN.com article was first published, Pitt fans on Panther Lair, which allows users to comment in discussion threads, were angry over Cosgrove’s support for Graham.

But their anger turned to rage as they began to focus on his claim that he had played football for Pitt. Commenters noted that they could not find evidence of any former Pitt player with Cosgrove’s name.

“This led to a lot of people investigating and questioning the legitimacy of his position as a former Pitt football player,” Panther Lair editor Chris Peak said.

Mike Humes, a spokesman for ESPN, said that the author of the article was introduced to Cosgrove on the sideline of an ASU home game against Wisconsin. 

According to Humes, Penni Graham, Todd Graham’s wife, and Tim Cassidy, ASU’s director of football operations, introduced the writer to Cosgrove.

ASU employees contacted by phone Thursday would not answer questions about Cosgrove. ASU Senior Associate Athletic Director Rocky Harris has not responded to an email asking for comment on the relationship between Cosgrove and the university.

Humes also said that the network initially checked Cosgrove’s claim that he played football at Pitt by looking at Cosgrove’s biography, posted on the website for his company, Pentec Health. In the biography, Cosgrove was described as a two-time Pitt football letter winner.

According to Humes, ESPN spoke with E.J. Borghetti, Pitt’s senior associate director of athletics, late Thursday afternoon. During this exchange, Borghetti told the network that there were no records to indicate that Cosgrove ever played in any regular-season games for Pitt football.

After ESPN spoke with Borghetti, ESPN edited the article to reflect that Cosgrove had only played in a 1986 spring game, Humes said.

“It was an unfortunate oversight, and we updated the story as soon as we received the accurate information,” Humes said in a statement he emailed to The Pitt News.

Borghetti separately told The Pitt News that there are no records indicating Cosgrove ever received a varsity letter from Pitt.

The only official record that shows Cosgrove’s involvement with the Pitt football team was a spring roster from 1986, he said. But for the fall season that same year, there is no mention of Cosgrove on any roster.

Pitt spokesman John Fedele also said the spring roster was the only record that mentions Cosgrove as part of the football team.

“Thus, any time he spent with the Pitt football program as a student-athlete would’ve been brief,” Fedele said in an email.

Fedele said records do indicate that Cosgrove was enrolled at Pitt from September 1985 to December 1986.

Cosgrove graduated from Rowan University in 2000, according to Jose Cardona, a spokesman for the university, which is located in Glassboro, N.J.

Borghetti did not answer further inquiries Thursday and Friday on the relationship between Cosgrove and Pitt’s athletic department.

But meanwhile, Cosgrove’s comments continued to garner attention.

Peak said that as of Thursday afternoon, the thread on Panther Lair questioning Cosgrove’s status as a former Pitt player had more than 1,600 views. 

After attempting to contact Cosgrove and his assistant, Michele Perez, by phone, The Pitt News tried to reach Cosgrove on Facebook and Twitter. Both of his profiles were later deactivated.

His Facebook account was deactivated sometime after 5 p.m. Thursday. The user did not respond to a message from The Pitt News.

At about 9:25 p.m., a user on Cosgrove’s Twitter account responded to a direct message from The Pitt News that asked him to respond to accusations that were being made against him online.

“What accusations?” the user asked in a direct message.

About 10 minutes later, his Twitter account was deactivated before the user answered another direct message that asked whether he would be willing to talk over the phone.

But by Thursday evening, details in his online presence that linked him to Panther football were being edited.

His LinkedIn profile and biography on Pentec Health’s website were also amended to remove the claim that he had won two varsity letters with Pitt football. 

The settings for his profile on LinkedIn were later changed so that users who are not connected to Cosgrove could not view the page. By late Saturday afternoon, Cosgrove’s LinkedIn profile no longer appeared when The Pitt News searched for it.

At least six messages left at Pentec Health asking for comment from Cosgrove on Thursday and Friday went unreturned. At least two of these messages were left with Perez.

But users on Panther Lair continued to show interest in Cosgrove.

As of Saturday, four discussion threads about him had been viewed more than 5,400 times with more than 100 replies. These numbers were still growing at the time of publication.

Instead of being outraged, fans on the site were starting to react to Cosgrove’s claim with sarcasm.

One thread titled “What’s your favorite Joe Cosgrove moment?” mocked Cosgrove by attributing other, patently false claims to him. This thread had almost 700 views and 24 replies Saturday.

“I clearly remember when he safely landed U.S. Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson [River]. No one was injured,” one Panther Lair user wrote sarcastically in a reply to the thread.

Peak said he thought Cosgrove was misrepresenting himself when he spoke to the ESPN reporter, but he was more perplexed than angry.

“It’s just a strange story,” he said. “It’s bizarre that someone would concoct something like this. It remains kind of murky. I’m curious to know the reaction of the Pitt community after this comes out.”