Real Sports on Jay Glazer

He broke almost every aspect of Favre's retirement/trade and owned ESPN on that one, which was covering the shit out of it. If there's been a bigger story in the last couple years, I don't know what it was.

And that's with Favre's agent being in bed with Mort.

 

The difference between Mort, Schefter, Pasquiarelli (sp?) and some of the other top nation NFL reporters (I can't speak for Clayton...) is that Glazer doesn't hide from his "conflict of interest", like the MMA stuff and the connection with the players who he trains.

A couple years ago he did a podcast (maybe Carolla's or Simmons') where he was going on and on about how great Matt Leinart was going to be, because after working out with MMA fighters for the entire off-season, he had an edge to him that was missing before, blah, blah, blah...

Obviously, he was wrong about Leinart, but the idea of NFL players paying one of the top NFL reporters to work out and train with him is just beyond comprehension.

 

Are we sure they're paying? Or is free training part of the back-scratching?

 

Teams have hired Glazer's company to work out with their players during the off-season. I think the Falcons did it a couple years ago. I'm assuming it was paid, but I can't say 100 percent.

 

And he said he only reveals about 3 percent of what he knows.

 

Glazer was sucking up to guys and befriending them long before social media. In the late '90s the rumor was he was paying guys for inside info.

 

Isn't it better that we at least know what his biases are? As a reader, I'd much rather have a biased source with full disclosure than an "objective" source with none.

Further, let's say, as someone speculated, he has paid sources in the past. If he's breaking pure news and isn't wrong, what's the issue? He gets a story, the source gets a benefit. How is this any different from when an agent provides a reporter with information to apply pressure on a team? Certainly, I could see some potentially negative consequences: 1.) people have great incentive to make up stuff for money (but we already have procedure in place to make sure false information isn't published) and 2.) sources would demand money for stories in the future (which doesn't seem all that unfair--why should reporters get to profit from information someone else owns?). But nothing about this seems all that "unethical" other than some journalistic convention that has made it so.

 

Jay's a good guy and an interesting character for sure, I enjoy his work and flair.