Sporting Madness

(Dave Pratt conducting his radio show: photo from the TEAM 1040 website ). A few new things in the Dave Pratt case , which continues to get worse and worse. A quick recap: Pratt, a prominent Vancouver sports personality who wrote for the Vancouver Province and currently still hosts a drive-time radio show on the TEAM 1040 which is partially simulcast on Rogers Sportsnet Pacific, lost his job Wednesday after a reader e-mailed the newspaper to let them know that Pratt basically cut and pasted an entire 2000 piece in Sports Illustrated by Rick Reilly. You can find my original post on the case here and the second one here . Now, the new developments. First, in a CBC story earlier today , Pratt described the plagiarism as a "minor gaffe". "It was a Saturday and I wanted to get out of [the office] before noon," he told CBC over the phone. That is absolutely inexcusable. If he's serious about apologizing, why does he call it a "minor gaffe"? That quote loo...

Okay, an interesting thing here. The Province story on Dave Pratt's plagiarism mentioned only the one specific example, but said the piece "contained some clear similarities" to Reilly's article. I thought the other things would be pretty minor if they weren't mentioned, which is why I perhaps wasn't as severe on Pratt as I might have been in the first post. I also thought it might be difficult to round them up, given that the column got axed from the 'Net. Well, thanks to one Sportsnet.ca forum commenter, we can see the two pieces side by side (actually above and below), and there are many more issues. Here's the full pieces (potential plagiarism bolded by me). Bob Cole is one for the ages all right David Pratt, The Province Published: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 Sooner or later, it gets to be closing time. So pour it like you don't own it, bartender, and let's have one for the great Bob Cole. After four decades of doing play-by-play for the CBC...

Photo: Dave Pratt co-hosting his radio show (photo from the TEAM 1040 website ). This dropped in from out of the blue. The Vancouver Province has terminated its regular column from TEAM 1040 AM broadcaster Dave Pratt after he plagiarized a line from a 2000 Sports Illustrated piece by famed writer Rick Reilly ( now of ESPN ) on U.S. college basketball coach and broadcaster Al McGuire and used it to refer to Bob Cole in a piece published yesterday. For those of you unfamiliar with Pratt, he's one of the most prominent Vancouver sports media personalities: he co-hosts the TEAM's afternoon drive show with Don Taylor of Sportsnet , and an hour of their show is usually televised on Sportsnet Pacific each day (sort of the West Coast version of Prime Time Sports , but without the business focus). Here's the original : "They say he was born 72 years ago last Thursday, but don't believe it. McGuire dropped straight out of Guys and Dolls with a martini in one hand and a b...