Chris Mortenson passes away

Van Everyman

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And just days before the Deflategate episode of the Dynasty airs.

I will never understand why he left that tweet up so long.
 

PedroKsBambino

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His opportunity to reverse course and show integrity, honesty, and professional standards has now passed permanently.
 

JOBU

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Way to shit all over someone guys. We are better than this. Very deflating.
 

PedroKsBambino

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Jesus, we are a miserable folk. He had a huge impact on the modern way we consume sports.
And then he disgraced himself and his profession, and an innocent player and team. And after it became clear to everyone with a pulse he was wrong, he refused to acknowledge it—-solely out of arrogance and pride.

We are all the sum of our actions. His net out to being a dishonest hack without a shred of integrity. He was, as you note, once a lot better than that….but he chose a different path in the end, and that’s bad for everyone.

He earned his rep, and it is what it is.
 

Caspir

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Jesus, we are a miserable folk. He had a huge impact on the modern way we consume sports.
He did? Like, him specifically? How? He seems like a cog in the sports infotainment wheel that happened to fabricate a story to get clicks because he was an attention whoring fuck face, but I’m open to alternative views that he was a revolutionary media figure that somehow was duped into fabricating a story like an attention whoring fuck face.
 

PC Drunken Friar

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Ya’ll must be fun at parties. He was horribly wrong at one point (of prejudice) but completely changed a lot of how we consumed football. Shiiiiiiit, I got shit here for not caring about the death of a war criminal, and this is ok on the public side?
 

jon abbey

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He...completely changed a lot of how we consumed football.
Sorry, as someone who watches a fair bit of football but who attempts to watch none of the endless discussion around it, can you explain this? This is not a sarcastic question, if someone had asked me who Chris Mortensen was earlier today, I would have answered 'one of the talking heads on ESPN, I think'.
 

PedroKsBambino

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Fair enough, it’s never the best look to dance on someone’s grave. He’s a person, he has a family, and he did—early in his career—-do good things at least for football fans.

But death does not exonerate you from all your mistakes, and on a Boston sports board it should not be surprising he’s judged by his biggest, last, and unretracted mistake more than the rest of his career.
 

Jed Zeppelin

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It required (and still requires) absolutely zero journalistic talent or integrity to sit in front of the camera and repeat verbatim what some league or team official told you in order to push a particular agenda. Good work if you can get it, and don’t have a soul or work ethic beyond what is required to look at the texts on your phone and read what they say. Absolute replacement level mouthpiece until his unforgivable fuckup and to be honest this guy probably skated most of his career because he mostly worked during a time when nobody was really scrutinizing the degree to which his ilk were just parrots for their sources.
 

PC Drunken Friar

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Sorry, as someone who watches a fair bit of football but who attempts to watch none of the endless discussion around it, can you explain this? This is not a sarcastic question, if someone had asked me who Chris Mortensen was earlier today, I would have answered 'one of the talking heads on ESPN, I think'.
He was one of the biggest Draftniks on ESPN. He was the face of the NFL Draft. He was the guy. I didn’t care much one or the way or the other, but he was so up and front of every draft I watched. He fucked up big time on the pats. Boo-hoo get over it. I enjoyed our run and liked watching the draft.

Dancing on his grave is very weird (not in response to jonabbey)
 

Ale Xander

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He was one of the biggest Draftniks on ESPN. He was the face of the NFL Draft. He was the guy. I didn’t care much one or the way or the other, but he was so up and front of every draft I watched. He fucked up big time on the pats. Boo-hoo get over it. I enjoyed our run and liked watching the draft.

Dancing on his grave is very weird (not in response to jonabbey)
The face of the NFL Draft was Mel Kiper, not Mort
 

ZMart100

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Jesus, we are a miserable folk. He had a huge impact on the modern way we consume sports.
Goebbels was probably more important to modern sports media. Yet I would argue that Goebbels was even worse than Mort.
 
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jon abbey

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He was one of the biggest Draftniks on ESPN. He was the face of the NFL Draft. He was the guy. I didn’t care much one or the way or the other, but he was so up and front of every draft I watched. He fucked up big time on the pats. Boo-hoo get over it. I enjoyed our run and liked watching the draft.
I thought Mel Kiper was the big draft guy on ESPN?
 

Cellar-Door

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Mortensen's claim to fame is that he was Schefter before Schefter. The guy with a million sources in the league. Of course like Schefter he got there by uncritically reporting exactly what he was told without any checking or analysis
 

BringBackMo

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There are times when this site is just a hell hole with no redeeming value or respect for anything at all that makes life worth living. And then you all go and TOTALLY REDEEM this place with a thread like this.
 

SemperFidelisSox

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Yeah, I always just remember Mortenson being on the Sunday night show with Berman and Tom Jackson. He would confirm injuries and news like that.
 

The Mort Report

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I've always felt weird about having this name, I got it right around around when he started that segment, but it was centered around my frat brothers a year before finding a goalie jersey I had my senior year in high school that since I joined the team late and it had a different last name than mine, so everyone called me Mort(short for the other last name) for a while. Then I just became "The Mort Report!" and it stuck. Due to my mixed views on him, I've always wanted a new handle, but I could never find I liked.

That being said, a woman lost her husband, and a son lost his father, something that hits really close to home recently, and dragging a guy that just died and left family behind just because he had shitty reporting on (most of)our favorite football team feels slimy
 

cheekydave

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Seeing his death reported checked twitter was shocked to find 99.99% of posts covering him in Glory. ONLY because it seems....unseemingly? to crap on a dead guy because he caused irreovocable damage to the Pats, AND given the years and times and space, to reverse track, never did.

So I guess hes not the devil, but also no savant, I score him as incredibly average, and guessing he was a good dad and husband, so I do feel bad for his family, BUT if only he had had integrity, and balls, to own up to what he did.

Thank you SOSH for delivering and staying true to form.
 

Cellar-Door

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Seeing his death reported checked twitter was shocked to find 99.99% of posts covering him in Glory. ONLY because it seems....unseemingly? to crap on a dead guy because he caused irreovocable damage to the Pats, AND given the years and times and space, to reverse track, never did.

So I guess hes not the devil, but also no savant, I score him as incredibly average, and guessing he was a good dad and husband, so I do feel bad for his family, BUT if only he had had integrity, and balls, to own up to what he did.

Thank you SOSH for delivering and staying true to form.
He was by all accounts a good guy who helped along a ton of the top people at ESPN. Fans may hate him but people who worked with him aren't going to care.
 

Patriot_Reign

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He blocked me years ago on Twitter for asking a benign question regarding deflategate. Prime example of thin skinned media people who struct me as assholes.

Having said that I don't root for anyone's passing so hopefully he's in a better place.
 

pedro1918

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I wish (almost) no one dead and have great empathy for Mort’s family. Cancer is a horrible way to go and I hope it was as peaceful a passing as possible.

This does not change the fact that Mort was a horrible reporter. He was a league patsy. No more than that. The “Deflategate” stuff was horrible, but his bullshit about the Kraft’s apologizing to him forever cooked him in my mind. He went from a league patsy to a liar. There was no way to believe a word that came out of his mouth.
 

Mystic Merlin

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He was a big part of building a cottage industry of information gathering within, and not as an antagonist to, the power structures of the NFL ecosystem that only hyper-charged with the ubiquity of the internet. An entire cadre of reporters (Schefter, Rapoport, et al) of questionable net value to NFL fans are indebted to him, and it seems he was generous and kind to tons of people at ESPN and never really pissed anyone off except Patriots fans so it isn’t surprising he is being heaped with praise. In terms of his legacy, I don’t see what he ‘pioneered’ as offering a lot of value, but whatever.
 

BroodsSexton

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I've always felt weird about having this name, I got it right around around when he started that segment, but it was centered around my frat brothers a year before finding a goalie jersey I had my senior year in high school that since I joined the team late and it had a different last name than mine, so everyone called me Mort(short for the other last name) for a while. Then I just became "The Mort Report!" and it stuck. Due to my mixed views on him, I've always wanted a new handle, but I could never find I liked.

That being said, a woman lost her husband, and a son lost his father, something that hits really close to home recently, and dragging a guy that just died and left family behind just because he had shitty reporting on (most of)our favorite football team feels slimy
How about “The Mort Mort Report”?