Rick Maese on Adam Schefter

[boundforboston]

"Attended zero games."

But access!

And he's never attended a game or practice so he could start building relationships. [/blue font]

You're right, of course. But seriously, there is very little to be gained as a reporter from covering football games. There's no pregame access. Postgame access is choreographed to an inch of its life. (This was college football, but we weren't even granted access to coordinators. Players who played poorly were never made available, either.)

I see a lot of posts here from young writers looking to break in who discuss what events they have covered, and even after years of this, I looked forward to those three hours on Saturday. I admit it. But they should repeat this mantra every day in the mirror: Adam Schefter does not go to games. The sole reason a lot of people want to go into this business, and one of the best around does not partake in it.

My experience covering the NFL -- which is what is being discussed here because that's what Schefter covers -- is that only the podium after the game is choreographed. Once the locker room opens, everyone's fair game. Of course, players could skip out, but the same thing would apply to MLB/NBA/NHL/etc.

 

[joe king]

"Attended zero games."

But access!

And he's never attended a game or practice so he could start building relationships. [/blue font]

You're right, of course. But seriously, there is very little to be gained as a reporter from covering football games. There's no pregame access. Postgame access is choreographed to an inch of its life. (This was college football, but we weren't even granted access to coordinators. Players who played poorly were never made available, either.)

I see a lot of posts here from young writers looking to break in who discuss what events they have covered, and even after years of this, I looked forward to those three hours on Saturday. I admit it. But they should repeat this mantra every day in the mirror: Adam Schefter does not go to games. The sole reason a lot of people want to go into this business, and one of the best around does not partake in it.

My experience covering the NFL -- which is what is being discussed here because that's what Schefter covers -- is that only the podium after the game is choreographed. Once the locker room opens, everyone's fair game. Of course, players could skip out, but the same thing would apply to MLB/NBA/NHL/etc.

This is correct. NFL locker rooms are open. The players don't always want to talk to you, but reporters have access to everyone after a game.

When I started covering the league a few million years ago, most teams had open practices, too, and they arranged the daily open locker room period at a time when players would actually be there. And you could grab guys as they came off the field after practice, too. You could actually talk to the starting quarterback every day if you needed to.

Today? I don't know what it's like league-wide, but the team in my area only opens practice for the first 15 minutes or so -- long enough to watch them stretch and that's about it -- and the room is usually quite sparsely populated during the open period. The big names designate one day a week when they'll talk to media.

 

[Elliotte Friedman]

"Not going to games" is much different in the NFL (or football in general) than other team sports.

First of all, as someone else pointed out, Schefter went to a lot of games before this point in his career. His relationship with the Broncos and Mike Shanahan served as the launching point to this. Anyone who tells a young reporter breaking in "You don't have to go to games because Adam Schefter doesn't" is giving them awful advice. Face time is still important when you start out. People have to get to know you.

As for Schefter, he's limited in what games he can attend. He's most valuable in the studio on game day, and the NFL's schedule is unlike any other. If he was covering MLB or the NBA or the NHL, I'd bet he'd be "out" a little more. I do a similar job for NHL, and my number of games attended has sharply decreased in the past few years. However, my new corporate overlords want to change that and I support it. I find it makes a difference.

The more interesting thing about the Sheffield piece is that it tells you that you don't necessarily need to talk to players to be an "insider." (God I hate that word.) Jay Glazer does very well with it, but the vast majority of stories are broken by executives/coaches.

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

"Not going to games" is much different in the NFL (or football in general) than other team sports.

First of all, as someone else pointed out, Schefter went to a lot of games before this point in his career. His relationship with the Broncos and Mike Shanahan served as the launching point to this. Anyone who tells a young reporter breaking in "You don't have to go to games because Adam Schefter doesn't" is giving them awful advice. Face time is still important when you start out. People have to get to know you.

As for Schefter, he's limited in what games he can attend. He's most valuable in the studio on game day, and the NFL's schedule is unlike any other. If he was covering MLB or the NBA or the NHL, I'd bet he'd be "out" a little more. I do a similar job for NHL, and my number of games attended has sharply decreased in the past few years. However, my new corporate overlords want to change that and I support it. I find it makes a difference.

The more interesting thing about the Sheffield piece is that it tells you that you don't necessarily need to talk to players to be an "insider." (God I hate that word.) Jay Glazer does very well with it, but the vast majority of stories are broken by executives/coaches.

Of the national NFL reporters, Glazer gets more of his info from players than the other guys. He's got a good in with them because he works out with them.

Schefter was super tight with Terrell Davis when he covered the Broncos. He wrote his autobiography. He wrote Shanahan's too.

I know Schefter pretty well and he was always very nice to me. I know others who just ****ing hated him though, and many of them had very good reason to feel that way.

People always said, "Oh, he only gets this because of Shanahan." when he covered the Broncos or. "He only got this because he's at NFL Network" and then he goes to ESPN and breaks more news than all of the other NFL people there combined.

I wish Maese had reached out to Barry Forbis for that story. Forbis could have told some killer Schefter stories.

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

Schefer was also the victim of one of the best pranks in the history of the business.

You can't find much about it because The Denver Post wiped it from it's archives.

 

[JayFarrar]

Schefer was also the victim of one of the best pranks in the history of the business.

You can't find much about it because The Denver Post wiped it from it's archives.

Well, now you need to share.

 

[CD Boogie]

I marvel at his energy and work ethic, but that seems like a hollow, myopic existence. He seems to have no outside interests beyond fantasy football and bull****ting with Jim Cramer. Maese's profile didn't do a very good job of humanizing Schefter or explaining what makes him tick. He didn't get into a fraternity...which apparently changed the course of his life? Because if he was in a fraternity, he wouldn't have time to work for the newspaper? But what about Schefter's childhood? Did he play football? Why such an interest in that sport?

I found Magary's profile of Glazer in GQ a lot more interesting, and Magary isn't a journalist by trade.
http://www.gq.com/entertainment/sports/201402/jay-glazer-nfl-fox-sports

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

Schefter left the RMN under really crappy circumstances. It was a no-brainer for him to leave because he got a signing bonus and a $40K a year raise to go to The Post. A lot of people at both papers were pissed about it. Rocky employees found out that he left when they read his byline in The Post that morning. Forbis was at the Olympics and someone had to call him and tell him that his lead Broncos writer had gone to the competition.

It was about a year later when Schefer filed a late note. It said, "Add to Adam's notebook" He did this all the time.

It said, "When he emerged from the shower, Broncos quarterback John Elway was sporting a nipple ring. When asked about the jewelry, Elway said, "That's none of your business, but if you must know, it was a gift from my wife."

It gets added to Adam's notes and Elway goes ballistic the next day.

The Post wrote a 16-inch apology/clarification the next day.

Lots of rumors as to who pulled off the prank. The most popular one was that someone from the RMN did it with the help of someone from The Post.

 

[CD Boogie]

Outstanding!

 

[TigerVols]

So good for Adam Schefter and those two college buddies who have managed to stick with journalism all these years. Both are single. And all they do is write and travel. They seem happy.

That's the thing. Schefter is married with a kid. How he manages to make that work is far beyond me.

The kid's not his and his wife is a 9-11 widow, so his wife is probably willing to put up with a lot.

This will sound insensitive, but that is a great start to a sentence, the entire sentence to a novel.

Your comment's not nearly as insensitive, and demonstrably ridiculous, as Steak's original asscertion.

 

[Bob Cook]

I was particularly taken by the note about Schefter having a great memory, and ability to bull**** about, his sources' families, including the names of their kids and their ages. I don't think people realize how disarming that can be, and how much people trust you when you appear to give a **** about their lives.

(Cool story bro time) I saw this first-hand when I was covering football at IU during college. We went to cover a game at Michigan, and I was sitting next to Adam Schefter of the Michigan Daily. He introduced himself to me, and then he noted that his father had heard me interviewed on WFAN over the summer (it was the summer Bob Knight threatened to leave for New Mexico because he was in a snit over the school president calling him out), and that his dad relayed that I was very "well-spoken." I couldn't believe it; one, because I did the interview while lying down on the blow-up mattress I was sleeping on for the summer, and two, because he immediately recognized my name (which qualitatively is one of the most forgettable names out there) and put it together with what his dad told him.

 

[Alma]

"Attended zero games."

But access!

He works for ESPN, which has now multiple reporters stationed at every game, to cover the game.

If beat reporters stop going to games -- Schefter is not a beat reporter -- they're dead as useful sources of information.

 

[Alma]

Here's a question:

How often does Schefter report things that his sources don't want published?

I think he's fine at what he does. But if I had to boil down what he does it'd be this: He reports things that will officially be true shortly after he reports then, or were official just as he did. This is quite useful in the stock business. I'm not sure of its long-term usefulness in sports.

A guy like Woj for Yahoo, he gets most of the stuff Schefter does for his given beat (NBA), but then he gives context, meaning and power to the subjects he covers. He serves the readers.

Schefter serves the league. ESPN pays him handsomely to do that.

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

Here's a question:

How often does Schefter report things that his sources don't want published?

I think he's fine at what he does. But if I had to boil down what he does it'd be this: He reports things that will officially be true shortly after he reports then, or were official just as he did. This is quite useful in the stock business. I'm not sure of its long-term usefulness in sports.

A guy like Woj for Yahoo, he gets most of the stuff Schefter does for his given beat (NBA), but then he gives context, meaning and power to the subjects he covers. He serves the readers.

Schefter serves the league. ESPN pays him handsomely to do that.

I agree, but if Schefter reports things first, isn't he serving the readers by doing that?

 

[Songbird]

Windhorst got scooped by sportswriter LeBron James.

But a day or two later ESPN was first -- FIRST! -- to report that basketball player LeBron James was negotiating final terms with the Cavs, because it was important for ESPN to inform people that ESPN could be the first outlet to deliver a piece of inconsequential news.

I don't think people give a rat's ass if Jocko Magillicutty's big signing is FIRST reported at 10:38 a.m. because it will be tweeted out and Facebooked out a thousand times over by 10:39 -- and who "broke" that news again?

Does that downplay Schefter's work ethic? No.

Maybe it's just ESPN's daily overkill of EVERYTHING that gets old and tired.

 

[Dick Whitman]

The best was when Chris Broussard "broke" the story that Michael Jordan was OK with LeBron wearing No. 23 with the Cavs.

That was one of the top headlines down the right rail for a day.

 

[LongTimeListener]

EDIT: I see Recovering came back to this. Just skipped right over it.

My first non-deleted wipeout post! I feel like shotglass!

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

I'm wondering why Schefter and La Canfora both left high-paying positions as NFL Network's scoops guys in a span of about three years.

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

I'm wondering why Schefter and La Canfora both left high-paying positions as NFL Network's scoops guys in a span of about three years.

Schefter got a huge raise to do so. He also had a non-compete so he had to sit on the sidelines for six months. Not sure if LaCanfora had to do the same.

Rappoport is NFLN's scoop guy these days and does an incredible job.

 

[MisterCreosote]

The best was when Chris Broussard "broke" the story that Michael Jordan was OK with LeBron wearing No. 23 with the Cavs. That was one of the top headlines down the right rail for a day.

I could LOL at this Broussard clip all day, every day: