The Wise Guy: Petered Out on Peter King
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of Peter King.
It’s sad because I used to love him. As one of the most, if not the most, respected journalists in the business spanning an over 20 year tenure at Sports Illustrated, King has developed contacts and scoops that always made his reporting stand out above his peers. King’s Monday Morning Quarterback piece on SI.com is particularly a must read because he always had a knack for getting the best quotes from coaches or players who were involved in the most important or entertaining games on Sunday.
And when he came onboard NBC’s Sunday Night Football in 2006, we got to see Peter King as just a normal, professional journalist without all the bells, whistles, or ego of some of his brethren who made the jump from print to television.
Five years later, however, and I’m suffering from King overload. Let me count the ways.
1. Twitter. The humility King displays on television is belied by his Twitter persona. King is the, well, “King” of the #humblebrag (look it up), meaning he’s always looking to promote himself in a subtle, backhanded way, the most obvious of which is by constantly retweeting people who compliment him. Not cool.
2. Television. If you haven’t heard, the network formerly known as Versus (now the NBC Sports Network) feels like between Twitter, SI.com, the magazine, and Sunday Night Football that you don’t have enough Peter King in your life. So they’ve developed a weekly show, airing 7 pm on Friday, in which he and Mike Florio will be breaking down the week’s upcoming match-ups. So let me get this straight: a journalist and a blogger (who used to be lawyer) are going to break down Xs and Os for me? I haven’t been this excited since the T.Ocho show.
3. Predictions. This brings me to my strongest gripe about King, which isn’t necessarily his fault. Every year, King, like a lot prominent media members, predict team records and playoff/Super Bowl match-ups for the upcoming season. It’s all fun and games that nobody takes seriously–especially when someone like Colin Cowherd doesn’t do his math right–with one big exception: everyone seems to report Peter King’s predictions as if they’re news! Case in my point, the Chicago Tribune, which probably has some of the most sophisticated local NFL content around, featuring, for example, a former NFL player who breaks down Xs and Os, a scout who reviews tape after the games, and even excerpting the highly technical Football Outsides Almanac about the Bears for 2011. But when Peter King predicts that Bears to go 8-8, all the coverage gets pushed to the side for this, apparently, front page story.
