Peter King screws up

I very well may be d_bing this, but this correction was in this week's SI:

"Peter King's ranking of the NFL's top 500 players in the Sept. 3 issue listed three players twice: Panthers defensive end Mike Rucker (at 279 and 319), Raiders cornerback Fabian Washington (at 372 and 419), and Ravens safety Dawan Landry (at 267 and 454)."

Ranking three guys twice, one almost 200 spots apart? Is that proof that the whole list was just space-consuming shit?

Very good issue of SI, by the way.

 

I thought the idea of ranking the 500 best players was extraordinarily arbitrary. I didn't dig it. I also thought SI's team previews were less than stellar.

 

When I'm perfect, then I'll start getting worked up when people make miniscule mistakes...

If he listed Peyton Manning or Tom Brady twice, fine... In this case... Who gives a shit?

 

I don't think 497 players in a top 500 is miniscule, Mizzou. You don't think Panthers, Raiders and Ravens' fans noticed their players were listed twice?

Not a fireable offense either, but still pretty shoddy attention to detail for something that SI featured on its cover.

More germane to me is that this also exposed what a fraud the idea was to begin with. How would Peter King explain having the same player nearly 200 spots apart?

My guess is he can't ... which is what makes a list like this so silly.

 

Trust me Mizzou, I'm not the type of guy who bashes on every high-ranking sportswriter out of jealousy like some people. Notice I didn't mention the other SI correction about the Pac-10's in-conference record being 41-49 in their predictions (hint, it has to be .500). Shit like that happens, often in my copy.

Go back through my posts and you'll see that I'm not that type of guy.

But the fact that he has a guy listed twice, once in the 200s and one damn near close to 500 shows me that he was just throwing shit on the paper without really believing in any of these rankings. If he was going to screw up and list him twice, don't you think it'd be within 10 or 20 of each other? I had no problem with the Rucker and Washington screw ups. The Landry error questions the credibility of the entire piece.

Am I wrong?

 

The King 500 is not a tremendous new idea, at least for folks who have followed pro wrestling and read Pro Wrestling Illustrated at any point during the last 20 years. PWI churned out a terribly arbitrary (and, of course, fake) list of the top 500 wrestlers in the business each December.

If an idea is good enough for PWI, it probably should not be good enough for SI.

 

Who are players 501, 502 and 503 ? They get a bump to the bigs now.

 

Maybe SI should go to a Most Hated and Most Popular list like PWI. They should also hire Dan Shocket to write his Off The Top Rope column where he can continue to constantly shit all over Tommy "Wormslime" Rich.

 

Well, this is more legit than the "Andy Katz missed a comma" threads that will be here during hoops season...

Whenever people make lists like this, they fuck up because there is so many opportunities to do so... We even had a thread on here about how the Orlando Sentinel fucked up their college QB rankings...

 

I'll agree with that.

 

I think the bigger issue is Landry being mentioned 200 spots apart. How arbitrary can a list be if a guy is either No. 200 or No. 400. To me, it calls into question the credibility of the entire list.