Safe to say the one person who emerged from Rick Reilly's "I had that first on Twitter" debacle relatively unscathed was Steve Young, who at least had the presence of mind to get (by all appearances) seriously pissed off at Reilly's crowing over due credit, misguided as it was, with a death stare for the ages.
So, yeah, funny thing about that. Seems that Young, the good ESPN soldier that he is, is walking back whatever it is you may have surmised from his wayward glance, chalking it up to little more than a "bro stare." You know, just bros being bros, staring at each other like bros so often do on the set of a postgame NFL show.
Young clarified what went down when he appeared on KNBR Wednesday afternoon with hosts Tom Tolbert and Ray Ratto.
Bay Area Sports Guy transcribed the full exchange that opened the segment. Here's an excerpt:
Tolbert: Before we get to football, let's talk about the death stare. The Rick Reilly death stare. I've never seen that from you, Steve. I didn't have hi-def and closeups when you were playing, so maybe it was there. Tell me what you were thinking when you heard Rick Reilly say something like, "Make sure I get credit for that. I had it on Twitter first."
Young: No (laughs). There's an inside joke here, is that the guys on the set, because that's the last thing we do. Now you got to remember, it's like 1:30 in the morning. And it's the last thing is Rick's little section. So we're kind of joking around. That was not a death stare. What it really was, it kind of was incredulous. I was like, "You didn't just say that." And so I was joking with him. And that's why I hit him. We didn't know we were on camera. It all happened without our knowledge. And so, that's when I hit him. I'm like joking with him staring at him like, "You're crazy." It was more like "you're crazy" kind of thing. I wasn't upset about it.
Tolbert: Was it a bro? Like inside your head I could hear you going, "Bro."
Young: Bro, exactly! It was a bro stare. That's exactly what it was. It was a bro stare. It was like, "C'mon bro!"
Really, bro? Bro.