Why Do I Continue to Read Peter King?

[OCST]

 
My daughter brought this book home from school and gave it to me to read for her bedtime story last night.
 
I had to explain to my wife why I was laughing.

 

[Corsi]

 

[MyDaughterLovesTomGordon]

The MMQB: Ya know, I can't think of any low points either. It's an amazing job you're doing, Rog!
 
Goodell: Thanks Pete. It's so great to have a learned and trusted source like you to validate my feelings and convictions. 
 
The MMQB: No problem, Rog! We should probably get a sandwich now. I'm hungry. 

 

[joe dokes]

The MMQB: Ya know, I can't think of any low points either. It's an amazing job you're doing, Rog!
 
Goodell: Thanks Pete. It's so great to have a learned and trusted source like you to validate my feelings and convictions. 
 
The MMQB: No problem, Rog! We should probably get a sandwich now. I'm hungry. 

 
The MMQB: You had a few of them.
Goodell: I just said, I haven’t thought about that. I think when you’re doing this job, you’ve got to do this job and you take highs and lows and you work to address them as quickly as possible and as thoroughly as possible.
 
 
 
Fictional Real Reporter:  I understand that you haven't thought about it.  So I'd like you to think about it now. You just mentioned "highs and lows."  What were some of the lows?
 
 
 

Very interesting time-cut stat. It would have been well over two minutes per game if accepted penalties had been flat compared to 2013.
 

 
Does it add that much more time to a game to accept a penalty than decline it?
 
 
 
 

d. Great point by Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com: Dan Uggla played four games for the San Francisco Giants last year, committed three errors, went 0-for-11 … and will get a World Series ring from the Giants. Classy organization.
 

While my frame of referemece is limited, I think *every* team gives a ring to just about *anybody* affiliated with the team for *any* length of time. ("Earl Snyder....Abe Alvarez......come on down.......")

 

[Future Sox Doc]

Wow. I actually thought you guys were making up what he was going to say, as, you know, satire. 
 
It's really impressive that's the actual article. 

 

[DennyDoyle'sBoil]

Goodell has this move where he tries to use terms of art to make things sound more complicated than they are and give the incorrect appearance that they are subject to some weighty internal decisions that normal mortals can't possibly understand.  He does this over and over and over.  Just two examples on the first page of the interview:  "It's what we call a 'continuing obligation.'"  And "The competition committee looks at . . . what we call the unintended consequences."
 
The part that gets me is "what we call".  No, dipshit, that's what everyone calls it when you change something and it has an effect you didn't want.  These are not complicated words or concepts.  They are not beyond the contemplation of mere lay people.  Every fucking parent that put his kid to bed at 7:00 because he was exhausted only to have him wake up at 4:00 a.m. knows what the fuck an unintended consequence is.  Everyone who lets their dog outside to run around in the middle of the summer knows they have a "continuing obligation" to bring him back inside. 
 
Ahhh, I see what you're talking about, Peter.  We have a term for that 850 Park Avenue, we call it "goobledygook pigfucker," so really we're on top of it and you needn't worry about it.
 
The entire piece reads like King gave Goodell a list of the subjects before the fact.  

 

[yecul]

Do you think it's like the beginning of Quiz Show where they insist on a pretense of impartiality or are they at the point of just giving each other the questions/answers? Is there any way this was setup as a real interview? 
 
The amazing thing is that he still managed to somewhat flub and answer and need to clarify himself. When Peter King is getting you...

 

[pappymojo]

Goodell has this move where he tries to use terms of art to make things sound more complicated than they are and give the incorrect appearance that they are subject to some weighty internal decisions that normal mortals can't possibly understand.  He does this over and over and over.  Just two examples on the first page of the interview:  "It's what we call a 'continuing obligation.'"  And "The competition committee looks at . . . what we call the unintended consequences."
 
The part that gets me is "what we call".  No, dipshit, that's what everyone calls it when you change something and it has an effect you didn't want.  These are not complicated words or concepts.  They are not beyond the contemplation of mere lay people.  Every fucking parent that put his kid to bed at 7:00 because he was exhausted only to have him wake up at 4:00 a.m. knows what the fuck an unintended consequence is.  Everyone who lets their dog outside to run around in the middle of the summer knows they have a "continuing obligation" to bring him back inside. 
 
Ahhh, I see what you're talking about, Peter.  We have a term for that 850 Park Avenue, we call it "goobledygook pigfucker," so really we're on top of it and you needn't worry about it.
 
The entire piece reads like King gave Goodell a list of the subjects before the fact.  

Playing devil's advocate here, but Peter King is a moron. Fair chance King doesn't understand terms like unintended consequences.

 

[GeorgeCostanza]

Every beer he drinks is distinctive. Rendering the word useless.

 

[joe dokes]

* * *​

SOFTBALL-FEST WITH GOODELL. I hope the blood money is worth it. You sold the last remaining shred of your integrity with this disgusting softball-fest with Roger Goodell. You know the only reason you got this interview is because you were a good soldier and stood by him in the fall, even disputing your own previous reporting. I think you’ve become addicted to the celebrity and don’t want to lose access.
Your questions were simply set-up questions to his prepackaged talking points. Even the resignation question was a softball, with ZERO follow-up. Here are some possible follow-ups: Why wouldn’t you consider resigning? Why do the majority of people think you should resign? But those are questions asked by journalists, not sell-outs.
After nearly two decades of loyal readership (I seriously have not missed a single week, except for your guest columns), it breaks my heart to say I am no longer an MMQB reader as of today. Farewell, and best of luck.
—Vince D.
 
 
 
Vince, I’m sure there’s nothing I can say that is going to change your mind. You hold an opinion that some of my readers agree with. Although I would stridently defend the questions that I asked in covering approximately 12 to 15 topics that I had intended to cover in the one hour I was slated to have with Goodell,   I do believe reading back the interview that I should have asked follow-ups on several questions. That is my fault. I didn’t avoid asking him follow-ups out of some fear of his response; I did it because I felt I had so many things I wanted to cover and did not want to leave any of my topics un-asked. I hope that you will come back as a reader, but if you don’t, thanks for all of your support in the past.
 

 
He *intended* to cover 12-15 topics in 60 minutes?  And he didn't anticipate that the lack of follow-up is would makes the whole thing a softball, because any idiot knows what answer he'd give to the initial question.
 
"I didn't want to leave my topics un-asked."
No. You just left them unanswered.

 

[Corsi]

 
http://deadspin.com/peter-king-does-weird-things-with-his-mouth-1693585530?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_twitter&utm_source=deadspin_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

 

[Leather]

Why does King wear North Face t shirts?   
 
Is he going for a jog?  Hiking a mountain?  Doing anything that necessitates wearing a $40 performance t shirt?
 
I mean, it's neither practical nor professional. 
 
 
EDIT:  my favorite part of that little compilation is when he briefly arches his eyebrows as if he knows he's being videotaped and is proud of his performance.

 

[Reverend]

He *intended* to cover 12-15 topics in 60 minutes?  And he didn't anticipate that the lack of follow-up is would makes the whole thing a softball, because any idiot knows what answer he'd give to the initial question.
 
"I didn't want to leave my topics un-asked."
No. You just left them unanswered.

So in an interview with Goodell, King privileged what he wanted to ask over what Goodell had to say?

Sounds about right.

 

[Marciano490]

 
http://deadspin.com/peter-king-does-weird-things-with-his-mouth-1693585530?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_twitter&utm_source=deadspin_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

 
Even LL Cool J thinks Peter looks weird here.

 

[joe dokes]

 
 
http://deadspin.com/peter-king-does-weird-things-with-his-mouth-1693585530?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_twitter&utm_source=deadspin_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

 
"mmmm..the inside of my mouth....distinctive...."  That bottle to mouth shows quite the shaky hand.
 

So in an interview with Goodell, King privileged what he wanted to ask over what Goodell had to say?
 

At a minimum he treated them as equally important.
 

I mean, it's neither practical nor professional.
 

 
Here's another angle.  Everyone else at least managed a shirt with some sort of collar. King looks like a guy who just wandered into the scene.
 

 

[DJnVa]

And doesn't appear to be listening, taking notes, or recording what was being said.

 

[JohntheBaptist]

SNIPPED THE KOTTONMOUTH KING
 
http://deadspin.com/peter-king-does-weird-things-with-his-mouth-1693585530?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_twitter&utm_source=deadspin_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

 
The pitfalls of a life spent breathing through the mouth.

 

[joe dokes]

And doesn't appear to be listening, taking notes, or recording what was being said.

 
At one point, when he lifts the bottle to his mouth, he's got some kind of notes in his hand, and a pen briefly appears...although he doesn't appear to use it. [#zapruder]

 

[Leather]

And doesn't appear to be listening, taking notes, or recording what was being said.

 
"Hey, man, I just had a big interview with the Commish put out yesterday.  I'll answer some questions on that today, and I'm good for, like, a week!"

 

[MentalDisabldLst]

At one point, when he lifts the bottle to his mouth, he's got some kind of notes in his hand, and a pen briefly appears...although he doesn't appear to use it. [#zapruder]

 
King's tongue can be seen going back, and to the left.  Back, and to the left.

 

[John Marzano Olympic Hero]

Question to the group: we all know how mailbags work and what kind of emails are chosen. Therefore, do we give Peter King any credit for choosing Vince D's email? King's answer was dumb; but I have to hand it to him, I don't think many writers would have used an email so dripping in vitriol. 

 

[ifmanis5]

Question to the group: we all know how mailbags work and what kind of emails are chosen. Therefore, do we give Peter King any credit for choosing Vince D's email? King's answer was dumb; but I have to hand it to him, I don't think many writers would have used an email so dripping in vitriol. 

Yeah, I'm pretty shocked he printed that; and admitting that he was aware that some other readers would agree with the assessment that King is a total hack.

 

[Reverend]

I give him some credit for addressing it, yeah.
 
But I'm more curious if that's reflective of just how many such emails he got and what some of the others might look like.

 

[joe dokes]

Question to the group: we all know how mailbags work and what kind of emails are chosen. Therefore, do we give Peter King any credit for choosing Vince D's email? King's answer was dumb; but I have to hand it to him, I don't think many writers would have used an email so dripping in vitriol. 

 
I think its another form of humblebragging. As pointed out above, while he said, "yeah, I could've followed up," he also said, "I thought my questions were so important that they had to be asked..." And the whole, "I hope you come back but if you don't, thank you so much" reeked of condescension.

 

[Reverend]

Deadcast: Peter King Talks To Roger Goodell, Accomplishes Nothing
 

So Peter King landed an interview with Roger Goodell (I know… I'm as shocked by his journalistic coup as you are) and the commissioner took the opportunity to spew out a bunch of boilerplate Roger Goodell nonsense: blanket declarations of self-assurance, private police forces, bullshit concussion stats, and obscene lies about the NFL's influence in the fabled domestic violence space. This endless stream of bullshit deserves a quality fisking, and it gets one in this week's Deadcast.
 

 

[John Marzano Olympic Hero]

I noticed that Deadspin is starting to do Deadcast now and I hope that they don't do this for everything. I don't have time to listen to two people bitching about something for an hour, when I can read the same jokey JOKEZ in ten minutes. 
 
Ugh. This is where I started to lose Simmons. 

 

[Leather]

I noticed that Deadspin is starting to do Deadcast now and I hope that they don't do this for everything. I don't have time to listen to two people bitching about something for an hour, when I can read the same jokey JOKEZ in ten minutes. 
 
Ugh. This is where I started to lose Simmons. 

 
Yup.  I would wager the majority of visitors to places like Deadspin are doing so at work or during class when audio isn't an option.   It drives me bonkers when websites use videos for stories that are perfectly appropriate for print.

 

[Reverend]

Thirded. I googled it and was like, "Ah-HA! I knew it would be there--let's see what they said!" and then...
 
My understanding is that it's easier to generate ad revenue from podcasts. Which means yeah, they probably are going in this direction.

 

[ifmanis5]

It drives me bonkers when websites use videos for stories that are perfectly appropriate for print.

Totally agreed.
 
I'm sure the thinking is, how do we get the 18-24 demo to give us page views? More video! More audio! But the reality is I don't want that slowing stuff down my browser and I can consume the same material about 10x faster by reading the print. I only have so much free time, watching a video is a *close window* for me.

 

[joe dokes]

Totally agreed.
 
I'm sure the thinking is, how do we get the 18-24 demo to give us page views? More video! More audio! But the reality is I don't want that slowing stuff down my browser and I can consume the same material about 10x faster by reading the print. I only have so much free time, watching a video is a *close window* for me.

 
Also agreed.
And the unfortunate irony is that the writing at Deadspin is usually pretty sharp, IMO.

 

[Papelbon's Poutine]

Totally agreed.
 
I'm sure the thinking is, how do we get the 18-24 demo to give us page views? More video! More audio! But the reality is I don't want that slowing stuff down my browser and I can consume the same material about 10x faster by reading the print. I only have so much free time, watching a video is a *close window* for me.

Agreed but I think the problem is while we can read a written piece a lot faster, they can do a podcast a lot faster than it takes them to write a coherent article. The bar for a podcast not being sloppy is also a lot lower than that for an article.

In short, I think they're all getting lazier.

 

[GeorgeCostanza]

Agreed but I think the problem is while we can read a written piece a lot faster, they can do a podcast a lot faster than it takes them to write a coherent article. The bar for a podcast not being sloppy is also a lot lower than that for an article.
In short, I think they're all getting lazier.

Nailed it. And I fifth, or is it sixthththth at this point? One of the main things that drove me away from CNN.com

 

[One Leg at a Time]

Agreed but I think the problem is while we can read a written piece a lot faster, they can do a podcast a lot faster than it takes them to write a coherent article. The bar for a podcast not being sloppy is also a lot lower than that for an article.

In short, I think they're all getting lazier.

I think that another reason is that they are a lot less likely to get called out for the sloppiness / bad data / incorrect facts in a podcast than they would if something were written down.  Fisking a podcast is not as fun, nor as easy as fisking an article.
 
For a while, I was afraid that PK would move to a podcast format, and I would miss the joy of coming here and seeing what Dr. Leather thought...

 

[Corsi]

Holy shit.
 

f. I like those pieces by the new Jeter site. But (he said, sticking his chest out with some pride) The Players’ Tribune didn’t invent the first-person athlete column. Nor did The MMQB. But our site did a score of them when Jeter was still a shortstop and not a publisher—by Richard Sherman, on multiple topics; by Russell Wilson, on race in the NFL; by journeyman defensive end Austen Lane, a gut-puncher of a piece on what it’s like be cut; by Lydon Murtha, a teammate of Richie Incognito and Jonathan Martin, on life on the inside of the bullying in Miami. And others. Just to set the record straight.
 

 
"Just to set the record straight."  Go fuck yourself.

 

[Corsi]

t. Fired up to see the Barak Goodman/Ken Burns three-part doc, “Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies,” on PBS this week.
 

 
Nothing gets Pete fired up like cancer!

 

[John Marzano Olympic Hero]

The first-person athlete story has been around since the turn of last fucking century when baseball players wrote* about the World Series. Not to mention the fact that I remember the Boston Herald doing the same thing back in the mid to late 80s.

* Yes, some were ghost written but, more importantly, others were not.

To even insinuate that MMFQB was among the first is complete and total bullshit.

 

[John Marzano Olympic Hero]

Seriously. Fuck this guy.

 

[joe dokes]

The first-person athlete story has been around since the turn of last fucking century when baseball players wrote* about the World Series. Not to mention the fact that I remember the Boston Herald doing the same thing back in the mid to late 80s.

* Yes, some were ghost written but, more importantly, others were not.

To even insinuate that MMFQB was among the first is complete and total bullshit.

 
George Plimpton's rotting corpse points a dessicated middle finger at Peter King. As does Jerry Kramer's mauled hand.

 

[Toe Nash]

Athletes have had guest columns for a long time as PK notes. The Players' Tribune is ONLY athletes writing (or at least that is the #1 focus) which seems more novel. What a clown.

 

[Jed Zeppelin]

You guys, Peter King is not some lowly middle man passing information along. He is the Gatekeeper, and no self-important athletes who think they can do his job without his explicit permission are going to render his sacred pen obsolete while he lives and breathes.

 

[ifmanis5]

 
George Plimpton's rotting corpse points a dessicated middle finger at Peter King. As does Jerry Kramer's mauled hand.

Yup, as does Jim Bouton, Ken Dryden and a bunch of others. King is literally the worst.

 

[Reverend]

Moving beyond historical examples to the conceptual, King seems to think that letting people speak for themselves is an innovation.
 
His noblesse oblige attitude about it is frankly unnerving.

 

[pappymojo]

Peter King lets athletes write his column as an easy way out of having to do work. 

 

[joe dokes]

You guys, Peter King is not some lowly middle man passing information along. He is the Gatekeeper, and no self-important athletes who think they can do his job without his explicit permission are going to render his sacred pen obsolete while he lives and breathes.

 
He'll be standing at that Gate, quintuple espresso in one hand, pen in the other raised high, mumbling about his cold, dead hands.

 

[Future Sox Doc]

 
Nothing gets Pete fired up like cancer!

 
I understand- but this is a Pulitzer prize winning book, a Ken Burns documentary. Maybe "fired up" isn't the right term, but I am excited to see it tonight. 

 

[SydneySox]

 
I understand- but this is a Pulitzer prize winning book, a Ken Burns documentary. Maybe "fired up" isn't the right term, but I am excited to see it tonight. 

 
I'm not sure you do understand.

 

[GeorgeCostanza]

Very interested in seeing, looking forward to watching, sure.

Fired up? I was fired up when the pats won the super bowl.

Boy am I fired up to see that new human sex trafficking documentary. Not the words a self aware compassionate individual would use.

 

[Van Everyman]

Methinks he meant this the other way round:

@SI_PeterKing: But there is nothing like having a good dog. The pain when dogs are gone is worth the joy of their lives.

Nice work, Pete.

 

[E5 Yaz]

Methinks he meant this the other way round:


Nice work, Pete.

 
Actually, nice work Van Everyman.
 
The tweet you posted in the second part of a tweet response. If you took the time to read both parts together, you'd realize what he was saying

 

[Van Everyman]

You mean his unyielding love of Bailey? I had read that. It still doesn't read right – but I probably shouldn't expect more from Peter.