A headline in an Eastern Connecticut newspaper has gone viral in recent days due to a typo — at least we think it was a typo — diagnosing New York Jets linebacker C.J. Mosley with a curious injury.
“Jets’ Mosley could return after bye week from herniated dick in neck,” the headline for the Associated Press story in The Chronicle reads.
Unsurprisingly, the errant headline caught the attention of many, because let’s be honest, it’s pretty funny. That included longtime ESPN anchor Steve Levy, who reposted an NFL news aggregator account sharing the headline, along with his own thoughts on the matter.
“Very painful,” Levy wrote. “Trust me. I know.
Only Levy likely wasn’t referring to the pain that a herniated dick in the neck could actually cause — again, we’re making assumptions here — but rather the pain that The Chronicle‘s headline editor was likely feeling as a result of the error. That’s because nobody knows what it’s like to mistake a “disc” for a “dick” better than Levy, who famously made the same slip up while discussing then-New England Patriots cornerback Maurice Hurst’s injury during an episode of SportsCenter in 1995.
“And now the agent for Hurst has come out and said he will file a grievance against the Patriots, that according to NFL rules, the club should not have been able to release his client because he was injured. The agent claims that at the request of the team, Hurst has been playing with a bulging dick — disc — in his neck since the start of the season,” Levy said before fighting back laughter throughout the remainder of his highlights.
Others have made the same mistake as Levy in the years since — although it’s hard to recall a time that it happened in writing. In any event, it was funny to see Levy weigh in considering his own personal connection to the phantom injury.