Everyone wants to cover sports media, but perhaps not everyone should.
Mike Florio, the pro football talk guru, insider, and extraordinaire, is a weekly guest on NBC's “Football Night in America,” the most-watched pregame show. Although he appears on Sunday nights, he acts as a kind of police force for the league and the media. Some of the things he does are pretty good.
Others not so much.
This week, on the SI Media with Jimmy Traina podcast, Florio praised NBC over rival Fox over Tom Brady, the $375 million video game analyst who owns 10% of the Las Vegas Raiders. did.
“I've been at NBC for 15 years,” Florio said. “There's no way NBC would give Tom Brady a microphone when he owns part of the team. They would never do that.”
Except when Dale Earnhardt Jr. owned the car on NBC's Xfinity series. Earnhardt called a race in the league, but not his own. That's been the deal between Fox and Brady so far.
In addition to this, NBC just acquired the NBA rights and will be bringing in Utah Jazz minority owner Dwyane Wade and Grant Hill, who is currently a TNT analyst and owns a stake in the Atlanta Hawks. held a meeting with
“They would never do that,” Florio told Traina. “They would say, 'Tom, you have to choose your lane.'”
When asked if this was accurate, an NBC Sports spokesperson said, “We do not comment on hypotheses.”
Florio created “Pro Football Talk” nearly a quarter-century ago. This is a pretty incredible story of how he went from being a hobbyist lawyer to an institution that rivals the top football sites and is the mainstay of a premier studio show. But when he partnered with NBC, he was in the business of dealing with the network and its relationships, no matter how close he got to the limits and further than most people.
This erases the past of Pro Football Talk criticizing Mike Tirico on ESPN since Tirico became NBC's franchise player. Florio, an outspoken and opinionated man, once commented on the myth about trash cans being placed in schools, and once spoke out about teammate Football Night in America's Tony Dungy's 2023 apology. I didn't post either. A toilet for children who recognize it as a cat. There were no posts for cat 1st graders on PFT.
“There's a fundamental difference between being a good teammate to your colleagues and owning part of a team that competes in the league you cover and having a significant say in its direction.” Florio said. The Athletic Regarding the comparison between him and Brady.
All of this is not to say that Florio's overall points and Fox's criticisms of Brady's ownership of the Raiders and the inherent conflict of interest are without merit. In an ideal world, it would be one or the other.
In Florio's world, Fox should have given Brady an ultimatum on his $375 million contract: broadcast games or ownership of the Raiders. Even if it agrees with Mr. Florio's opinion, Fox may not have the right to immediately withdraw from the contract.
Florio has built a lucrative business rewriting, commentating and reporting NFL news. He goes all in over and over again. In this case, he shouldn't have done that. You know about glass houses and stones and things like that.
(Photo: Mike Ehrman/Getty Images)
