Deadspin wrongly accuses GOP Senate candidate of lying about high school football career

Or, more accurately, gets s–t wrong.

The sports blog Deadspin ran a piece Wednesday accusing Republican candidate for Senate in Colorado Cory Gardner of lying about his high school football career in an interview with the Washington Post.

In a Post piece published October 13, reporter Karen Tumulty quoted Gardner describing his time playing against a high school football team that ran the “single wing.” He used the play quite cleverly as a metaphor for what Democrats are doing wrong.

Dave McKenna over at Deadspin read the article and scrutinized Gardner’s claim, interviewing a 77-year-old retired teacher from his high school who claimed, “Cory Gardner wasn’t on the football team.”

The Deadspin writer than ran a piece slamming Gardner as a politician who “makes s–t up,” skewering the Colorado Senate candidate not only for the alleged football fib but also for his political views. He labeled Gardner’s conservatism “homo-hatin’ and climate-change-denyin’.”

Unfortunately for Deadspin, a Gardner campaign spokesman confirmed later that the Senate candidate and two-term congressman did indeed play football through sophomore year of high school. The retired teacher also walked back on his claims, admitting the candidate did play football.

Oops.

Gardner’s social media response to the in-depth coverage of his high school football career was priceless.

In McKenna’s defense, he did take blame for the erroneous story, though merely tacked on an “update” to the top of his Deadspin piece.

“It’s my responsibility to get everything and to the extent that anything in there is not right, that’s my fault and nobody else’s,” he told the Washington Post. “If it’s wrong, it’s my fault.”

Deadspin editor Tommy Craggs also published an article on the site Thursday which essentially apologizes for the mistake and concludes poetically, “the only thing for us to do now is to eat s–t.”