I HERD THIS ON THE INTERNET . . .

Buried ‘neath a defense/well-measured criticism of Dick Vitale by ESPN ombudsman George Solomon is some commentary about a matter that was sweeping through the college football blogs about a week ago. It involves the uncredited use of material from The M Zone on Colin Cowherd’s ESPN radio show. The material, which was hilarious, was sent to the show without a proper attribution as to its source. Cowherd and his staff didn’t vet the material to see if it may have come from some source other than the author of the e-mail.

Solomon justifiably calls a foul on Cowherd, not the first time he’s done so:

A flap over ESPN radio host Colin Cowherd’s use of the “Collegiate Wonderlic Test” for potential NFL players on his March 22 show was the result of a listener e-mailing eight questions from the test to Cowherd without telling him the feature came from the blog, “The M Zone.”

Originators of the blog — created for Michigan football fans — were upset Cowherd did not credit the site.

“When I saw it, there was no attribution, and I thought it came from a listener,” Cowherd explained. “We get dozens of items like that a day.”

Some M Zoners were aggressive and abusive in their e-mail responses to Cowherd, who in turn, retorted by e-mail.

“I should not have responded that way,” Cowherd said. “I should keep what I do on the air. It was my fault.”

Four days later, Cowherd gave The M Zone credit for the item, satisfying M Zone creators.

My take: ESPN’s radio and television hosts need to be vigilant in what they say and report over the airwaves and know the source of what comes over the Internet. And whenever ESPN staffers respond to anyone, via e-mail or postal mail, they, of course, need to remember they’re representing ESPN.

It’s fair and correct to note that Cowherd should be more careful about the origins of any Internet material. But let’s not forget that the original violator of The M Zone’s intellectual property was the person who sent the OSU Wonderlic Test to Cowherd in the first place. By failing to indicate the source from which it was taken, the e-mailer at the very least denied The M Zone its due credit, and (if they sent it with absolutely no attribution) could conceivably be said to have tried to pass the work off as their own.

Again, Solomon’s right to call Cowherd on the carpet for this, and the folks over at The M Zone were well within their rights to complain (though the e-mailers who became abusive were, in my opinion, wrong to do so). But, speaking as one who’s had his own work forwarded back to him without attribution more than once, would it kill you, dear e-mailers, to always include a link back to the source of the material you quote in your e-mails? See what kind of trouble it can cause when you don’t do so?

Highlight/CTRL-C/CTRL-V. That’s all you have to do. But I don’t need to tell you that, since you knew how to quote my stuff in the first place.