The Swamp

brian wrote:Another sanctimonious ass. Not like Burfict pistol-whipped someone on the field. It was a dirty hit and he earned his penalty and suspension but come the fuck on with the "what about the children?" bullshit.

mister d wrote:In King's defense, he's the one person I'd believe if he said he didn't know what "thug" was code word for. Probably heard the other guys using it and took it totally at face value.

mister d wrote:I bet he believed in Santa until college.

“Part of what I think about is, ‘Should I do something else?’ ‘Should I try some other thing?’

“Maybe, ‘Should I try to do more television than I’ve done?’”

“There are times when I say, ‘This has become a monster and I really should sort of scale back,’” he says of the column. He pulls all-nighters every Sunday evening during the NFL season, finishing his MMQB column in the wee hours. King does most of his reporting on the phone from New York. He spends a month each summer visiting NFL training camps, and says he travels about twice a month during the regular season for reporting. He watches most NFL games on Sundays from NBC’s studio in Stamford, Conn.

The column consumes his thoughts. He says, “Part of me says it’s just way too much work.”

He is thinking out loud now.

“It is too much work, and it is a real weight on my shoulders every week, but when I finish writing (the column), I feel like this is sort of a good contribution to people’s intelligence about pro football.”

King mentions other reporting challenges he finds alluring. He says he told his wife Ann that he might like to cover the 2020 presidential election.

“I don’t know if I could be any good at it,” he tells me as we approach Napa, “but I think it would be fun.”

King then talks about his dream of covering a full major league baseball season.

I wonder how many times King has written a story about a star free agent looking for his next big contract. Now, he is the star free agent. Covering baseball or politics, he wouldn’t have the personal history or access that he’s got in the NFL, America’s most popular professional game.

Later, shifting again, he says there is a chance he might move to NBC full-time, bringing his NFL column to NBC’s web site and doing more television work for the network.

Listening, I wonder if it’s the fatigue of a long season that has him talking about leaving SI for new challenges, or if it’s just Peter King being Peter King, and asking himself tough questions.

I reached Sports Illustrated Executive Editor Jon Wertheim. He declined to comment on King’s future.

DaveInSeattle wrote:Too much work! The guy gets paid 7 figures to generate drivel every week, and he has the nerve to complain about how its "too much work".

And he thinks covering a Presidential campaign would be "fun"? Ask any political reporter who has to schlep around Iowa or New Hampshire every 4 years, listening to a candidate's standard stump speech 10 times a day how much "fun" it is.

Jesus...talk about out of touch.

mister d wrote:Huge difference between working too much and it being too much work. King said the latter.

“... when I finish writing (the column), I feel like this is sort of a good contribution to people’s intelligence about pro football.”

This exchange between former Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch and L. Jon Wertheim, executive editor of Sports Illustrated:

Wertheim: “Everybody I’ve spoken to about you has referenced your financial savvy. What’s the source of that?”

Lynch: “You ate cereal before?”

Wertheim: “I’ve eaten cereal.”

Lynch: “Alright. Have you ever had a roach in your cereal before?”

Wertheim: “No.”

Lynch: “You haven’t, right?”

Wertheim: “I have not.”

Lynch: “If you came from eatin’ cereal with roaches in it before, Dawg . . . Feel what I’m sayin’? You wouldn’t want to do that again, right? Once you’ve seen the lowest of the low, you don’t want to go back.”

rass wrote:MMQB vs Breitbart

(and the referenced article on the multinational effort to get back Brady's jersey was actually pretty interesting)

sancarlos wrote: Used to be that Fatty McB was a favorite Swamp whipping boy. (My very first Swamp post was a dig at him). Now, the first post in this thread in 10 months calls to our attention his doing something admirable, in standing up to assholes/bad "journalists". Weird.

DaveInSeattle wrote:

sancarlos wrote: Used to be that Fatty McB was a favorite Swamp whipping boy. (My very first Swamp post was a dig at him). Now, the first post in this thread in 10 months calls to our attention his doing something admirable, in standing up to assholes/bad "journalists". Weird.

Well, to be fair, I haven't looked at the MMQB in probably at least a year, so Fatty McB has fallen off my radar.

brian wrote:

DaveInSeattle wrote:

sancarlos wrote: Used to be that Fatty McB was a favorite Swamp whipping boy. (My very first Swamp post was a dig at him). Now, the first post in this thread in 10 months calls to our attention his doing something admirable, in standing up to assholes/bad "journalists". Weird.

Well, to be fair, I haven't looked at the MMQB in probably at least a year, so Fatty McB has fallen off my radar.

Same. And I used to read Drew Magary's weekly fisking of MMQB and that's gone now too, so I haven't read it in any form in like a couple of years.

FACTOID THAT MAY INTEREST ONLY ME
Dick Hammer, the late grandfather of Sam Darnold, once played the Marlboro Man in print ads and billboards across the United States.

The Marlboro Man is one of the most famous images in advertising history. Several ruggedly handsome men played the part in the seventies and eighties in the ads. They were shown smoking a Marlboro cigarette and wearing a Cowboy hat.

mister d wrote: ↑Thu May 03, 2018 4:32 pm He was on WFAN last week and his take on the mortality of the NFL sounded waaaaaaay closer to mine than I expected.