Jeff Lightsy Jr. (top left) broke the news on DeSean Jackson coaching at Delaware State, but didn't get the best credit from many of the companies and people at the right. Jeff Lightsy Jr. (top left) broke the news on DeSean Jackson coaching at Delaware State, but didn’t get the best credit from many of the companies and people at the right.
College FootballTwitterBy Andrew Bucholtz on

News often comes out from unusual sources. While there are prominent national insiders covering each sport, they don’t break every story. And the latest example of that came from Jeff Lightsy Jr. reporting the news of DeSean Jackson set to become the head coach of the Delaware State Hornets (Division I FCS, MEAC) on X Thursday almost an hour before prominent national voices picked up on it:

But while many national and outlets voices did give Lightsy (who’s been a radio host at ESPN Louisville since 2022, hosting the “The Victory Formation Sports Show” there)  appropriate credit (with a retweet of his post, a tag, a mention by name, or something else), others did not. Here are some of those later reports that didn’t do a great job on this, with ESPN’s Pete Thamel citing no source in his first tweet (he did in a follow-up), the main ESPN account only mentioning Victory Formation Media (a step in the right direction, but unideal with no tag or link considering the many companies with names like that), Yahoo and Front Office Sports crediting just Thamel, and so on.

And X itself, in its trend results, saw its first mention of Lightsy five tweets down (in a correct tag from Bleacher Report):

These weren’t the only people and companies to get it wrong, but they were some of the more prominent. By contrast, here are some of the more appropriate credits for Lightsy from notable people and outlets:

(Yes, noted This Week In Bad Aggregation star “Dov Kleiman” did a good job of crediting here when much more mainstream outlets did not.)

It’s understandable why major outlets might have been cautious running this just off Lightsy’s reporting, as there are plenty of absolutely incorrect reports on coaching moves in particular. And independent confirmation from reporters of Thamel’s stature is notable, and matters (as does Thamel’s distinction of this being not finalized yet). But it would be much better to see correct credit after that; Thamel and ESPN can be cited for their confirmatory reporting as well, but they didn’t break this news.

And while ESPN is becoming generally better about outside credit than they used to be (and even did include an attempt at it here from their main account, albeit a far-from-ideal one), it’s notable that Thamel didn’t credit in his first tweet on this, and that so many outside outlets just went with “ESPN” or “Pete Thamel.” That’s not the best way to do this.

[Jeff Lightsy Jr. on X]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

View all posts by Andrew Bucholtz