Writing & reporting in today's NFL: One extra-wide horse shit latte please

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Sports Argument Stadium > The Football Funhouse > Writing & reporting in today's NFL: One extra-wide horse shit latte please

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

Peter King.

quote:

LIFE AFTER FOOTBALL IS NOT FOOTBALL'S RESPONSIBILITY. "I'm very sad for the loss of Junior Seau like everyone, but why is the league responsible for their well-being after their careers are over? Where does it start/end? Should a guy who only plays in a few games get the same counseling as a 20-year vet. Maybe the players should consider what 'life after football' looks like while they are in college and actually earn a degree.''
-- From Tom, of Palmyra, Pa.

Valid point. It's hard, when you're in the middle of the hero-worshipping, big-money life many of these players lead, to have the sort of perspective that a Matt Light or Kurt Warner has. I agree with you: More of them should.

Really. Really?

# ¿ May 11, 2012 03:00

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 16:28

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

Peter King posted:

10. I think these are my non-NFL thoughts of the week.

a. I may be the last person on earth still to have an AOL email address, I guess I'm just too lazy to change. Now I have a good reason to change. On AOL's front page the other day, the page with news and social and sports commentary, there was a picture of Kim Kardashian, with the news that she was caught going "commando,'' which, and you don't need to use Urban Dictionary for this, means she was photographed with no underwear. Of course you could click the link and go find out more about this important story. So I'm a prude. Do I need to see a headline about some celebrity's underwear displayed prominently on the front page of a supposedly respectable internet company? Aren't there idiot websites for that? Shame on you, AOL.

Peter King is awful but sometimes you come across gems like this that remind you just how incredibly out of touch this man is.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2012 18:47

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

Peter King posted:

So my brother Ken retired from his job in England in September, and we decided to give him a fun, frequent-flier-aided retirement gift: a trip to see a World Series game. So he came over and, as it turned out, the only game that would work for me was Game 1 in San Francisco, which we didn't know would be in San Francisco until last Monday night. Thanks to my friend Corey Bowdre with the Red Sox, we were able to buy seats at face value and we set off for California. I spent much of last Tuesday in Atlanta with Tony Gonzalez for some SI reporting, then flew to San Francisco Tuesday evening.

I was deep in coach, in a middle seat. (The only way to fly! A middle seat for five hours and 15 minutes!) The 50ish woman seated to my left got increasingly frustrated with her iPad, sighing heavily, until finally she said, "drat daughter!" and took the iPad and hit herself on the scalp with it. I clanked over, wondering if I was to feel the wrath of the iPad-abuser next, and she said, "My daughter must have erased this app I need! I can't figure the drat thing out!'' I told her I was sorry, and asked her what she did for a living.

"I'm in sales,'' she said. "On the way to San Francisco for a sales conference."

"Oh,'' I said. "What do you sell?''

"Well, various things,'' she said.

Well, all right then. We flew the rest of the way in crammed, painful quietude.

There's no point to the story. There's no punchline, no follow-up, no anything. Nothing omitted. That's all there is.

The life of Peter King.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2012 17:01

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

This man has the most mundane life:

Peter King posted:

There's a Starbucks in downtown Indy, on the circle surrounding the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, and I pulled up behind an Indianapolis police officer in front of it, put my flashers on, and ran in to get coffee. On my way out, five minutes later, the officer rolls down his window and says to me, "That your car?''

"Yes,'' I said.

"Need your driver's license,'' he said. "I can't believe you did that, right behind a cop. You parked in front of the hydrant.''

"My God, I never saw it,'' I said. "What an idiot I am."

He took my license, wrote out the ticket, handed it to me, and I said, "Sorry.'' I got in the car, and as I got set to leave, the officer got out of his car and gave me the stop sign, walking to the passenger window. I rolled it down.

"Give me that ticket,'' he said. "You were just in there for a couple minutes.''

"No, I did it,'' I said. "It's OK. My fault.''

And I started to realize: This man is about to rip up a ticket, for whatever reason, and I'm trying to argue him out of it?

Play idiot much?

Officer: "No, I'll take it. Just come back and see us. Say nice things about our city."

Me: "Hey, thanks a lot."

# ¿ Nov 19, 2012 19:19

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

I'd really like "surging" and "reeling" to be excised from the sportswriter lexicon.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2012 17:03

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

Given that Calvin Johnson is almost on pace to break Jerry Rice's record I hope that'll finally "break" the Madden curse.

Of course people will still point at all the other stars brought low by the curse, so oh well.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2012 00:35

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

Here's a new face here, Kevin Seifert.

http://espn.go.com/blog/nfcnorth/post/_/id/50883/free-head-exam-chicago-bears-46

quote:

2.
Offensive pass interference calls aren't as rare as you might think. Through Week 14, officials had called a total of 72, an average of about 2.9 per game. Bears receiver Alshon Jeffery certainly set a new bar by getting three on his own Sunday -- only Kenny Britt of the Tennessee Titans had that many all season entering the week

Something seemed odd to me about that number so I looked a bit more closely. At the start of Week 14, there were 208 NFL games played this season. 72 total OPIs called means... 2.9 OPIs per game?

Did... Did Seifert divide total games by total OPIs, instead of OPIs over total games? As in, games per OPI, instead of OPIs per game?

Yes... yes he did.

:eng99:

# ¿ Dec 17, 2012 21:26

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

Mind_Taker posted:

What competent football writer could see 2.9 OPIs per game and say "yep, that's reasonable"? Even without compiling any stats that number should look way off.

On top of that, he quotes a player as having the most OPIs as having only 3 OPIs total. That would mean, for 2.9 OPIs a game to be accurate you'd need at least 300~ players with 2 OPIs each, so Kenny Britt could be the champion of shoving off.

Let's say each team has on average about 8 eligible receiving targets. 4-5 WRs, 1-2 TEs, 1-2 RBs/FBs. That's 256 total receiving targets that could possibly commit OPI.

I guess ol' Kevin was in a rush to get that article out or something because :psyberger:

The weird thing is that Seifert usually is okay - not great or even really all that insightful, but not bad. I read his blog since it's an useful aggregrator of NFC North news.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2012 21:57

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

I don't even know how to reply to this:

Peter King posted:

Quote of the Week II

"They don't keep a record of meaningless yards, and these are meaningless yards. I hate to say it, but they are."

-- ESPN's Jon Gruden, with a valid point late in another double-digit Lions' loss, as Calvin Johnson of Detroit broke Jerry Rice's all-time record for receiving yards in a season.

These are the kinds of points a great analyst makes. Good job by Gruden.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2012 01:28

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

Peter King posted:

2. I think this is what I didn't like about Week 17:

...

h. Too many officials look too heavy to me.

[img-growing_ironicat]

# ¿ Dec 31, 2012 22:03

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

Peter King gets spicy:

quote:

Peter King ✔ @SI_PeterKing
My apologies for cursing during the @dpshow commercial break. Thought we were in a commercial break.

That aside, I've been enjoying the MMQB site quite a bit, and King is doing some actual reporting this week. He spent about a month following referees for a story for MMQB that's going to be released in segments on his site Wednesday through Friday. I'm actually looking forward to it. Like many, I didn't know a get-back coach was an actual thing (and that Pittsburgh's coach sucks at it).

# ¿ Dec 2, 2013 17:35

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

Not quite a journalism fuckup, but I was reading ESPN's NFC North blog and going "Wow, Schwartz's mug is taking a while to load..."

http://espn.go.com/blog/nfcnorth/post/_/id/64930/some-more-nuggets-from-jim-schwartz

Turns out they didn't actually create a smaller image for the photo blurb, they took a huge image and just simply shrunk it down to fit:

http://a.espncdn.com/photo/2013/1118/nfl_a_jimschwartz_cmg_65.jpg

Isn't this like web design 101 to not do that?

# ¿ Feb 12, 2014 03:18

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

Peter King posted:

The MMQB Tour pulled into Gaffney, S.C., late last Sunday night. The four of us�driver Andy DeGory, me, PFF�s Neil Hornsby, video man John DePetro�hustled into an Olive Garden for dinner before it closed at 10. �Anything to drink for y�all?� the waitress said. I blurted out, �Glass of Chianti, please.� She said she is sorry, but this is a dry county and there is no alcohol served or sold in this county on Sundays. We are crestfallen. DeGory, who has been driving for seven hours since West Virginia, just hoping for one lousy beer when he gets us to the motel in Gaffney, looks like his dog just died. We lived. Unhappily, but we lived.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2014 23:15

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

Peter King posted:

We walked into the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express, with the Tuesday USA Today and Cleveland Plain Dealer on the counter for those checking out. One problem. �We don�t have any reservations for you,� the front-desk gal said. We checked with our travel agent. Seems the reservation was made for Aug. 18, not Aug. 11. Next Monday. With no rooms available, our intrepid tour manager, Andy DeGory, got on the phone and found us rooms at the nearby Howard Johnson�s Motor Lodge.

Now it was 5:15, and we made it into the lobby of HoJo�s. Keys got dispensed, and we elevatored up to the third floor of the rather shabby place. Walking down the hall to our rooms, �rather shabby� got worse. The carpet on the floor stopped. The floor for the last half of the hallway was just cement. The place smelled. Just get in the room, just get in the room � How bad could sleeping be for 90 minutes? I thought. I put the key in my door and opened it.

The room looked trashed�either under construction or trashed. It was dark; I couldn�t exactly tell. And this voice from inside, weakly, waffled: �I�m � in � here.� Like some dying ghost.

Whoa! I closed the door. I went to the lobby.

�Might be a good idea when you give me the key to a room that there won�t be another person in it,� I said.

�W-w-w-what?� the front-deskman said.

I explained, and he said it must be a worker in the place who�d decided to sleep in an available room when it wasn�t occupied. As if I cared.

�Can you just give me a room? Any room without a person in it?� I said.

He did, and I went to another room at the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge, so happy to be at the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge, and praying that no living thing would be in the room.

There wasn�t. No idea if that included the bed bugs, but at least there wasn�t a living or comatose or dead person in the room, and that was something to be thankful for.

So I wouldn�t give the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge on the southern fringe of Cleveland a very high recommendation this morning.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2014 22:26

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

I really hope he tweets something embarrassing and it gets recorded multiple times.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2014 04:45

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

I don't mind Peter King too much since his website has some pretty quality journalism.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2014 01:04

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

Badfinger posted:

If there's ever a thing you should do to Aaron Rodgers, it's play a zone and give him plenty of time to read and extend a play. That's the thing that messes up Aaron Rodgers.

Thanks Ggregg!

You joke, but Rodgers is like, incredibly unbelievably famously good against blitzing defenses. I'm having trouble finding current numbers on it, but in 2011 he had a 131.4 passer rating against the blitz. He's still known for it, Mike Zimmer was talking about it before the Packers-Viking games.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2216983-can-aaron-rodgers-and-the-packers-unlock-the-mike-zimmer-defense-vs-vikings

2012, 119.9 passer rating against the blitz. 2014 prior to the Vikings game, 130.5 against the blitz.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2014 14:45

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

MMQB ran an overview/best-of-2014 on NFL Sports Journalism.

PFT Commenter wins an award.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2014 23:17

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

There were multiple goons espousing that same viewpoint two days ago

Gaze into the abyss . . .

# ¿ Apr 4, 2015 05:22

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

GenHavoc posted:

The guy I was answering called for everyone who ever worked in the industry to be harassed and shot.

Oh my!

# ¿ Apr 21, 2015 15:06

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/03/13/howie-roseman-philadelphia-eagles-nfl-free-agency

Peter King posted:

You remember Roseman. He�s the Andy Reid acolyte (MMQB Word of the Day! Look it up!)

# ¿ Mar 14, 2016 19:26

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

How much are they actually paying these people? I can't imagine that paying someone $50k fewer a year offsets the drop in revenue you get with lower-quality writers, or that $50k fewer a year actually matters to a corporation that's running multiple television channels and an enormous website.

I guess the big names, the TV hosts, people like Jon Gruden, are being paid in millions of dollars. But Tania Ganguli?

# ¿ Jul 31, 2016 21:01

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

And speaking of journalists, this interview of Ted Thompson by Bob McGinn came out. I generally like McGinn's work, especially his roster / player analyses and draft pieces.

That said, frankly, I thought this was a poor interview and that McGinn tried extra hard to target "storylines" by making hay out of minor situations. He repeatedly insinuated that there was a rift between Ted and Fat Mike, and tried to imply that there was ongoing dramas rather than the normal everyday occupations of a football organization.

I don't feel like I learned much from this interview, though my respect for Ted has gone up a bit for not putting up with these questions as well as his explanations of the pursuit of organizational stability and consistency as an overarching goal. I get that journalists try to be "hard-hitting" instead of a media outlet for the team, but I think McGinn could have accomplished a lot more here and drawn out more information if he hadn't been as combative in his questioning.

Of course, as a Packers fan, I probably have a blind spot here. Does anyone else get a similar impression from the interview?

# ¿ Jul 31, 2016 21:41

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 16:28

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; by exmarx; Fallen Rib

Can't believe no one has pointed out yet that King has previously argued that off-field shouldn't matter one single bit for Hall of Fame inclusion

If it doesn't matter for Sharper then it shouldn't matter for Tillman, you fat gently caress

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 02:47

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Sports Argument Stadium > The Football Funhouse > Writing & reporting in today's NFL: One extra-wide horse shit latte please