RIP Chris Mortensen

[BitterYoungMatador2]

Who the hell remembers Bruce Benedict?

Topps remembered him enough to give me about 18 of his baseball cards when I was a kid. Seemed like every third wax pack had Bruce Benedict or Ken Landreuax.

 

[ChrisLong]

Footage of Mort’s dive exists:

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/xJEWI95mtYE

It's like you were there.

 

[TigerVols]

Topps remembered him enough to give me about 18 of his baseball cards when I was a kid. Seemed like every third wax pack had Bruce Benedict or Ken Landreuax.

This here is the most factual post in the history of this website.

 

[goalmouth]

Topps remembered him enough to give me about 18 of his baseball cards when I was a kid. Seemed like every third wax pack had Bruce Benedict or Ken Landreuax.

Not Biff Pocoroba?

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

I had multiple cards of all three of them, including both Topps and Donruss.

 

[da man]

I had multiple cards of all three of them, including both Topps and Donruss.

You forgot Vic Correll!

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

The only answer to "who is the guy in every pack of cards?" is and will always be 1980 Joe Ferguson.

 

[TigerVols]

Not Biff Pocoroba?

Biff was my favorite Brave and I loved getting him in a pack. Which is why I was always disappointed the 300 times I got Benedict.

 

[ChrisLong]

When I quit the baseball card game, I didn't have to get rid of any Koufax or Mantle cards because I never got any. But I did have 10 Bob Aspromonte and 8 Bobby Lillis.

 

[da man]

Back in the mid to late ‘60s, I had a ton of Zoilo Versalles cards.

 

[DanOregon]

With King retiring and Mortensen dead, who is seen as "the dean" of football journos these days?

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

All day

 

[goalmouth]

With King retiring and Mortensen dead, who is seen as "the dean" of football journos these days?

BREAKING NEWS BY ADAM SCHEFTER

 

[Guy_Incognito]

Bruce Benedict came off as an entitled asshole with his comments.
Mort got the last laugh, though. Who the hell remembers Bruce Benedict?

I do! I used him yesterday for Immaculate Grid.
Should have used Biff

 

[micropolitan guy]

The only answer to "who is the guy in every pack of cards?" is and will always be 1980 Joe Ferguson.

Bobby del Greco and Gino Cimoli in my era.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Bruce Benedict came off as an entitled asshole with his comments.
Mort got the last laugh, though. Who the hell remembers Bruce Benedict?

I was a Braves fan through the rotten years. Bruce should be in somebody's hall of fame.

 

[wicked]

BREAKING NEWS BY ADAM SCHEFTER

Schefter and Rapoport. That's the list. I suppose Florio in tier 2.

 

[UNCGrad]

Mike Sando seems more in the vein of King with his Pick Six column. As King alluded, so much of what's popular now is analysis, which I'm mostly OK with. I like that stuff, and I should probably pony up for ESPN to begin reading Zach Lowe on the NBA again. I agree with King that wunderkind Ben Solak seems like he might be special.

I like Kevin Clark's podcasts, but I wish he was still writing. I always really liked the pace of Clark's profiles and pieces. But podcasting might be more of what the next iteration of King truly is.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

I have to admit I haven't read all of King's Farewell Column Part 2: Electric Boogaloo and am generally not into football deep dives outside of New Jersey's embarrassments, so this theory may be easily exposed (a bad take by me? never!!!). But from my vantage point, it feels like the soulless info merchants (Schefter & Rapoport) are the new currency. King had a built-in audience from his print work and jumped to the Internet when people still used it to actually learn **** and not to hang out in an echo chamber and/or feel informed by reading the summary of a link. Nobody really reads anymore. Everyone just wants to opine on the big moves, and Schefter and Rapoport do that. Does anyone remember the last interesting thing Schefter or Rapoport wrote? Is anyone outside of writers like us looking for the next King?

I was mocking King just a few weeks ago for a tepid Super Bowl take, but he would at least offer up mild criticisms of the league (usually after someone else did the dirty work, of course) and he made up for his meh writing skills with dogged reporting and some legitimate curiosity that unearthed interesting stories about the league and its players. He rarely left you saying oh wow that was well-written, but he grinded for the access he got and made the most of it. Can you imagine Schefter giving a **** about how the 4th-and-1 in OT was converted? Does he even remember it happened? And can you imagine him waiting to talk to Mahomes about it for more than a week? King was definitely compromised by his access--hard not to be at that level, outside of maybe Ken Rosenthal--but he more often than not tried to turn it into something semi-permanent instead of just another release of BREAKING NEWS dopamine.

Along those lines, I wonder if Florio is the closest thing he has to a successor. He's gets his share of SCOOPZ and he's still got a little bit of a rabble rouser to him despite being part of The Machine. He had a good bit earlier this week about the inevitability of the 18-game schedule and how all these broken bodies just aren't enough for the NFL.

 

[wicked]

Nobody really reads anymore.

You buried the lede two-thirds of the way down in that Ragu-length paragraph!

In all seriousness, this is the problem. We go for the dopamine quick hits, even if the quick hit is a useless morsel about a team cutting their third-string center. And I imagine those guys who deliver those hits get the same feeling when they report them out.

The last guys out there who can write and break bombs regularly are Passan and Woj. And I don't think Woj has written anything longer than six inches in a decade.