2695 replies to this topic

[Lose Remerswaal]

BTW, when he refers to "Bono", he means Sonny.

[JohntheBaptist]

This is like saying Jay Cutler is the "MVP favorite." Is it possible he'll win? Sure. Is it at all reasonable to call him the favorite? No. There are 100 ways to appropriately convey the situation other than to say that Cooper is an "Oscar favorite."

Look, the point here is, conceivably, to rag on Peter King for the many, many dumb things he says, right? Drleather does an awesome job of this. I check this thread often for that reason. In my humble opinion, what makes it less awesome is calling him on a thing like this.

You're wrong. "Favorite" could mean so many things to him here, and at worst you're ribbing him for not knowing the forecasting between "he could get nominated" and "he'll likely win" for the Oscars that don't happen for what, 3 months? Its all about ad campaigns and some capricious set of moving-goalpost narratives given the set of stars in question. My roommate gets Entertainment Weekly in the mail, and they forecast the Oscars all year long. They had a thingy on their review of the movie that stated he was good odds for Best Actor. What's really the big deal with "favorite" there? I mean he's definitely stretching to beef up his anecdote, and I guess that's quintessentially King, but his inability to have his ear finely tuned to anything pop culture isn't so bad. As DrL pointed out, he clearly knows nothing about movies, but he wasn't really talking about movies.

This isn't that funny an enterprise if that is the sort of thing he gets lambasted for, just saying. It just gets silly.

That said, it just drew a semantic reaction to what I thought was an otherwise awesome DrL effort, so agree to disagree, etc.

Edited by JohntheBaptist, 01 December 2012 - 04:01 PM.

[drleather2001]

Meh, constructive criticism of my playing curmudgeonly critic of King's clueless critiques is critical to my continued...um...complaining.

I appreciate that you care, man.


Edit: but seriously, I take 25 minutes every Monday morning to bluntly bitch about a fat old sportswriter. I don't take it very seriously, and sometimes I say dumb shit or overdo it. I'm not aiming for greatness.

Edited by drleather2001, 01 December 2012 - 09:15 PM.

[Reverend]

I'm actually of the opposite school of thought--if you don't know what the fuck you are talking about, why would you ever refer to someone as a favorite?

I mean, that's sort of the point, and it's fairly central to what King is about. It's not important to me or anything, but it does matter to some people even if I think it's silly, but even that doesn't matter--the point is he is making demonstrably bs claims about shit he doesn't understand.

That's stupid and unnecessarily so.

[nattysez]

Look, the point here is, conceivably, to rag on Peter King for the many, many dumb things he says, right? Drleather does an awesome job of this. I check this thread often for that reason. In my humble opinion, what makes it less awesome is calling him on a thing like this.

You're wrong. "Favorite" could mean so many things to him here, and at worst you're ribbing him for not knowing the forecasting between "he could get nominated" and "he'll likely win" for the Oscars that don't happen for what, 3 months? Its all about ad campaigns and some capricious set of moving-goalpost narratives given the set of stars in question. My roommate gets Entertainment Weekly in the mail, and they forecast the Oscars all year long. They had a thingy on their review of the movie that stated he was good odds for Best Actor. What's really the big deal with "favorite" there? I mean he's definitely stretching to beef up his anecdote, and I guess that's quintessentially King, but his inability to have his ear finely tuned to anything pop culture isn't so bad. As DrL pointed out, he clearly knows nothing about movies, but he wasn't really talking about movies.

This isn't that funny an enterprise if that is the sort of thing he gets lambasted for, just saying. It just gets silly.

That said, it just drew a semantic reaction to what I thought was an otherwise awesome DrL effort, so agree to disagree, etc.

I can only assume your going from "you're wrong" to "agree to disagree" was an homage to King's frequent refusal to take a position on things. Well done.

[TheWinkleman]

Speaking of his award prognostications, Eli Manning is his favorite for SI's Sportsman of the Year.

Meh, okay. So, Peter, what makes Eli so special on the field? What has been the secret of his success? What defines his competitive character and capability?

I've always thought Manning was so in control during games, so cool, because he realizes that it's a football game.

Well, shit on me. It's a football game.

[JohntheBaptist]

I can only assume your going from "you're wrong" to "agree to disagree" was an homage to King's frequent refusal to take a position on things. Well done.

Well, no. You're wrong, I'm just not interested in continuing the conversation, that was a nicer way of saying that. I'm not sure how much more clear my position could have been. Do you get what "agree to disagree" means?

Edit: but seriously, I take 25 minutes every Monday morning to bluntly bitch about a fat old sportswriter. I don't take it very seriously, and sometimes I say dumb shit or overdo it. I'm not aiming for greatness.

Yeah, sometimes one should unpost, and that was one for me. Kind of pointless to nitpick something I enjoyed overall.

I'm actually of the opposite school of thought--if you don't know what the fuck you are talking about, why would you ever refer to someone as a favorite?

I mean, that's sort of the point, and it's fairly central to what King is about. It's not important to me or anything, but it does matter to some people even if I think it's silly, but even that doesn't matter--the point is he is making demonstrably bs claims about shit he doesn't understand.

That's stupid and unnecessarily so.

Again, he wasn't talking about movies. And the Oscars aren't "the movies" anyway, my Mom sees five movies a year tops and always knows odd details about the Oscars. And they're a moving target. So the comment was obviously not informed, but largely, largely harmless. I also don't buy that it is "demonstrably bs"--where can it be demonstrated that Bradley Cooper isn't the Oscar favorite? Who is? I also think DrL would agree--its just funnier if the criticisms hit hard, and this one doesn't--again, speaking as a fan.

If he were talking about the Twilight kids sure, itd be different. But the film has been really well-received, particularly his performance, and you could easily chalk up the difference to nearly anything. The point of the anecdote was the interview of a topically relevant star being pulled for reasons x, y, z--not whether Bradley Cooper is really only going to get nominated and yeah maybe he could win but probably not, at least I don't think so now, who knows after they all spend fortunes on ad campaigns? He said "Oscar favorite" to mean "of current interest to many" ...and so he's off by six inches.

At the same time, "stupid and unnecessarily so" is probably fair. I don't mean to suggest he's right, just that that joke didn't hit for me. I could have been less douchey about it.

Edited by JohntheBaptist, 02 December 2012 - 06:02 PM.

[drleather2001]

On Sunday morning, I was talking to Joe Linta, the agent for the late Jovan Belcher, about the state of mind that might have made the Chiefs linebacker shoot his live-in girlfriend nine times with his own mother in the house and then, less than an hour later at the Chiefs' training facility, put the same gun to his head and pull the trigger.

You just know this is going to go off the rails. I haven't read the rest of the column yet, so I don't know for sure, but I have a good feeling.

"In this crazy state of mind he must have been in,'' Linta said, "I truly believe he didn't go to the facility to make a spectacle of himself, or to do anything like Columbine. If you knew the kid, you knew how grateful he was for what he'd been given, with the chance to play in the NFL. I believe he went there for one reason -- to thank them. To thank Scott Pioli and Romeo Crennel for helping make his dream of being an NFL player come true.''

Right off the bat, I'm getting an uncomfortable "Let's forget about the fact that he murdered the mother of his own child, and remember him for the wonderful man he really was" vibe from this. This is what King leads off with? Let's not forget that agents have an interest in painting their clients, even dead ones, in the best possible light. Because everything this guy says, his other clients are going to read. If he shits all over the guy for being, well, a murderer, it can't help the bottom line of his business.

And what this guy is saying "OH, no, he totally just wanted to drive on up to practice to give Romeo a shout out before killing himself" just sounds like bullshit. Maybe not 100% bullshit, but at least 50% bullshit. The truth is: nobody will ever fucking know for sure what the guy was thinking. I think the one thing that's clear is that he was out of his fucking mind. So, I don't think there's anything wrong with speculating what he might have been thinking/feeling (although some may argue, with some merit IMO, that to do so is to inherently attempt to rationalize his ultimately unforgivable act, and that is wrong), but there is no way to know for sure. At all. And anyone claiming as much is a liar and an asshole.

Linta didn't know how right he was.

Peter King, ladies and gentlemen.

King then gives a rather long-winded summation of Belcher's rather unremarkable career, and concludes it with this:

And that, until Saturday morning, is all we knew of Jovan Belcher.

Yea, and then he killed someone. I guess my question is this: if he had distinguished himself as a football player, there'd be no need to give a respectful and thorough overview of his career. And if he hadn't become a well known football player, how on earth does it matter. I don't know if King intends to do it, but so far he's written about 500 words and used all of them to pay respectful tribute to Belcher. And I find that distasteful. Frankly, I think King should have just led off with a paragraph stating:

"The situation in Kansas City is a tragedy, and the SI community will be sending money to start a trust fund for Belcher's daughter. Since the incident clearly transcends and eclipses football, I am going to leave it to the local authorities, and not dignify it with anything further."

Crennel spoke to me Sunday after the Chiefs game, but he said he didn't want to discuss specifics of what he saw and experienced outside the building. Pioli would not speak either -- to anything. Both men had been debriefed by the police for a lengthy police report, but have not spoken publicly about what happened.

Good for Romeo. Why are we dignifying this shitbag by talking about his football career?

At one point while the two men were alone in the parking lot, the source said, Belcher said to Pioli: "I came here to tell you thank you. Thank you for my chance. I love you, bro.''
The source said Pioli tried to calm Belcher, but had little success. At one point, Belcher asked Pioli, "Can I talk to Romeo and Gary?'' Crennel and Gibbs, he meant.
Pioli took out his cell phone and called Crennel, asking him to get Gibbs and come outside. (Imagine what Pioli had to be thinking here: I'm calling two of my closest coaching friends to come out into an open parking lot with an unstable man with a gun, who apparently has shot someone, and is impervious to any attempt to calm him down. How dangerous is that?)
Within minutes Gibbs and Crennel appeared. They, too, tried to calm Belcher, to no avail. Belcher thanked them for his NFL opportunity, and he began to walk away from them.

King has yet to talk about the murdered woman, or the baby he left an orphan.

"I wasn't able to reach the young man,'' Crennel said softly over the phone from Kansas City Sunday.
Belcher walked a few steps away, put the gun to his head, and pulled the trigger.
There will be counselors, for players who felt they didn't do enough to recognize Belcher's desperation, and for the three men who witnessed a man killing himself with a gunshot to the head. The counselors, according to one grief counselor I spoke with Sunday, will probably say something like this: Jovan made a decision by himself, having nothing to do with any of you. To Jovan, personal business had to be taken care of, and there was nothing that you could have done, so you can't punish yourself.

So, judging from the tone of King's piece Jovan Belcher was a hard worker who came from nothing, and was caught in a wave of desperation that nobody understood, so he took his own life in a heartbreaking manner: in front of the men he loved the most.

Sickening.

[Morning Woodhead]

I liked this part:

I've got a good Sunday conversation with Russell Wilson in my notebook, and I plan to write about the rookie quarterback class for my mailbag Tuesday ... that is, unless something else in the league intercedes.

Essentially, "you know, unless a pesky little murder-suicide pops up" Woe is me!!

[soxfan121]

King devotes 1000 or more words to Belcher.

Hey, at least he spelled the victim's name right when he listed her and the baby among the things Belcher had "earned" through his hard work.

BAG.OF.SHIT.

[drleather2001]

Oh, it keeps going:

Then some things started happening that hadn't happened to the Chiefs in this miserable, fire-everyone year. The Chiefs had turned it over a league-high 32 times in their 1-10 start, and here they were, efficient. Touchdown, field goal, touchdown by halftime, and they led the Panthers 17-14 at the break. At one point, Quinn, a career 53 percent passer, completed 14 passes in a row -- the longest consecutive-completion streak of his NFL career. "I don't know what happened,'' said Quinn, a very religious man. "I'd like to think maybe I had some help, somewhere, from No. 59 [Belcher]. But no, I can't explain it.''
Dormant players, disappointing players, woke up. Jonathan Baldwin caught his first touchdown pass of the year. Peyton Hillis ran for his first touchdown of the year. Tony Moeaki caught his first touchdown pass of the year.

Holy Moly! If only someone had murdered an innocent woman back in September, the Chiefs might have been contenders!

Watching the game in New York, I noticed safety Eric Berry leave the game in the second quarter, and he was gone until late in the third quarter. When he returned, he had a giant wrap on his hand, like the hand had been casted, and he played the last 20 minutes of the game favoring the hand. I didn't hear a report about it, but with regular secondary players Brandon Flowers and Abram Elam out, the Chiefs couldn't afford to lose Berry -- and they didn't.

Wow! Something that probably happens in every game, every week: guy goes out banged up, comes back in. What a scoop!

In the locker room, weary Chiefs players didn't know what emotion to have. Crennel told them to be sure to remember the family of Kasandra Perkins. And he told them there would be a long road of healing ahead.

There it is! The woman who was murdered. King can't even be bothered to mention her himself, he has to do it through a quote.

And now for the rest of the story.
The show went on around the league in Week 13, with a cloud over it. And this is what happened in a league that promises less December drama than usual:

Yup. Then he moves on. Nothing about Kasandra Perkins or the kid. From a guy who used to spend 100 words every week telling us about his spoiled daughters' softball games.

What a fucking disgrace.

in Week 13 when he eloquently used his post-game platform to address the larger society and how it may have failed Jovan Belcher. "When you ask someone how they are doing, do you really mean it? When you answer someone back how you are doing, are you really telling the truth? We live in a society of social networks, with Twitter pages and Facebook, and that's fine, but we have contact with our work associates, our family, our friends, and it seems like half the time we are more preoccupied with our phone and other things going on instead of the actual relationships that we have right in front of us. Hopefully, people can learn from this and try to actually help if someone is battling something deeper on the inside than what they are revealing on a day-to-day basis."
That, folks, is the best message I can leave you with today.

He can't help himself! What is this "Oh, poor Javon! We should have known!"

This is like the Jerry Sandusky thing in miniature. Nevermind the real victims: let's focus on the fake heroes.

I'll be at FedEx Field tonight for the Giants-Washington game. I've got a good Sunday conversation with Russell Wilson in my notebook, and I plan to write about the rookie quarterback class for my mailbag Tuesday ... that is, unless something else in the league intercedes.

Like, um...a woman gets murdered by an NFL player? Might you find time to write about her? You know, if that actually happened?

The Deep End

Each week, thanks to play-by-play game dissection by ProFootballFocus.com, I'll look at one important matchup or individual performance metric.
This week is a little different. I noticed that Jovan Belcher played only three defensive snaps in Week 12 against Denver in his first non-starting game of the season; he'd averaged 34 snaps a game on defense prior to last Sunday. So after the murder-suicide that took the lives of Belcher and his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins, I asked PFF.com czar Neil Hornsby to analyze just what kind of player Belcher, an undrafted free agent from the University of Maine in 2009, was.

OH. MY. GOD.

"So, after Ted Kaczynski murdered a bunch of people with pipe bombs, I wanted to know how good he was at chopping wood..."

Can he really not see how irrelevant and disrespectful this is? Am I being overly sanctimonious? This is... I mean, he's already spent a few paragraphs summarizing Belcher's career, now we have to talk about how good he was? As if that's his rightful legacy?

The guy is a MURDERER. Of the mother of his only child. And you're talking about the number of fucking snaps he got?

[coremiller]

Yeah this incident just shows that sportswriters are really out of their depth in these kinds of situations. Their training and background and habits and culture are extremely ill-suited for writing about this mess with any kind of insight or sensitivity. The stories and narratives they have spent their lives learning how to craft and tell just don't apply. The smart move would be to realize that and just say nothing, or include one paragraph about how generally tragic/awful the situation is for the families. But King, as the self-appointed voice of the American Football Fan, feels he has to speak. So he writes a column that's straight out of his standard bag of tricks because that's what he knows how to do, but it's totally tone-deaf because what he knows how to do and what the situation calls for don't match.

Also this phrase is brilliant in its awfulness and really sums the whole thing up: "So after the murder-suicide that took the lives of Belcher and his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins ..." You would never know from reading that line that Belcher was the killer, rather than some abstract third-party. The phrasing totally absolves Belcher of all his agency and responsibility for murdering someone. Yikes.

[Shelterdog]

Yeah this incident just shows that sportswriters are really out of their depth in these kinds of situations. Their training and background and habits and culture are extremely ill-suited for writing about this mess with any kind of insight or sensitivity. The stories and narratives they have spent their lives learning how to craft and tell just don't apply.

A huge problem the media has--and I think it goes beyond sports writing--is that they often appear to believe that if they report facts they've done their job, and that the emphasis/choice of topic is of no importance. (King tweeted this morning in response to a tweet accusing him of saying Belcher was a good guy "Not saying it does. Simply laying out what happened. U decide what to think"). Well here story selection is everything: every word spent on how goshdarn hardworking Belcher was is time not spent thinking about what he did, why he did it, or what happened to the victim.

[drleather2001]

" 'The fog of war' is a kind term for what he's seeing right now.''
-- FOX analyst Brian Billick, on the incomprehensibly bad performance of Arizona quarterback Ryan Lindley midway through the third quarter (6 of 22, 48 yards, no touchdowns, one interception) in the Jets-Cards game.

I have a feeling that neither Billick nor King know what the term "Fog of War" means. It refers to the the lack of clarity that leaders have during wartime. In the most basic terms, it could mean that a general at HQ has information regarding the location and strength of his units, but doesn't really know what's going on due to the inherent lag in communication and the tendency for people under high stress to not be particularly accurate in their accounting of their own strength vs. their enemy's. That's the fog of war.

So unless Lindey was blindfolded, and playing QB by having his receivers yell "Polo" to his "Marco"....no. That is not the correct term. The NFL is not like war. It's a dumb comparison that strikes me as disrespectful to those people that actually, you know, have to go to war.

Quote of the Week III

"I would dare you to find someone that does."
-- Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford, on WXYT Radio in Detroit, asked about wearing a cup to prevent the kind of kick to the groin that Ndamukong Suh inflicted on Matt Schaub.

And with that, we have had more discussion of Matt Stafford's balls than we have of Kasandra Belcher (or her daughter).

Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me II

One of the best young wide receivers in football, Cecil Shorts III of the Jaguars, has to be the only starting player in football who has more than $50,000 in student loans to pay off.
"When I tell guys about my student loans,'' Shorts said Friday, "they go, 'Dang! You didn't get a full ride?' They're shocked.''
...
So now Shorts, though he's earning $493,000 in this, his second season in the league, will space out his payoff of the loan and begin to put away money for the rest of his life.

Just a question about Shorts' investment strategy: wouldn't the interest rate on the loan (presumably 6.8%) make it such that paying it off ASAP would be a better move than spacing it out? This just seems odd to me.

Tweet of the Week IV

"Please, somebody take the Big East behind the barn and put it out of its misery.''
-- StevePoliti, columnist for the Newark Star-Ledger, and coverer of said Big East, after the conference lost yet another member, Louisville, to the ACC on Wednesday.

This may be me overreaching, but does it strike anyone else as being in poor taste to use a reference to killing something with a gun, in jest, given the events of the past few days?

I guess what I'm saying is: I'm 100% sure King didn't even consider that angle, and he probably read that tweet 10 times more than I did before putting it in his column.

Ten Things I Think I Think
...

l. Good camera work, FOX, catching Adrian Peterson looking up at the scoreboard for intelligence on the defenders chasing him on an 82-yard touchdown run.

"Good work camera men, for using your cameras to record the players on the field playing football!"

j. I didn't like the story, but it's a heck of a story, Jay Glazer's report that a Browns groundskeeper hanged himself at the Browns' practice facility Saturday.

Um. Wait, let me post that again.

j. I didn't like the story, but it's a heck of a story, Jay Glazer's report that a Browns groundskeeper hanged himself at the Browns' practice facility Saturday.

"I don't want to look like an asshole by saying I get off on stories about people killing themselves (if you haven't noticed already from my caressing of Javon Belcher's legacy), but I love stories about people killing themselves!"

2. I think this is what I didn't like about Week 13:

Not on the list: Murderers. Orphans. Dead Girlfriends.

The Adieu Haiku

Kasandra Perkins.
Romeo remembered her.
We all should. Often.

Patronizing bullshit.

Edited by drleather2001, 03 December 2012 - 10:29 AM.

[coremiller]

A huge problem the media has--and I think it goes beyond sports writing--is that they often appear to believe that if they report facts they've done their job, and that the emphasis/choice of topic is of no importance. (King tweeted this morning in response to a tweet accusing him of saying Belcher was a good guy "Not saying it does. Simply laying out what happened. U decide what to think"). Well here story selection is everything: every word spent on how goshdarn hardworking Belcher was is time not spent thinking about what he did, why he did it, or what happened to the victim.

He just doesn't get it. The tweet before that one is:

"Re criticism for Belcher news: It's reporting, not judging. A player shot himself in the head. I tried to learn facts about it. That is all."

Um, he didn't just shoot himself in the head, he also shot his girlfriend nine times. King is acting like the suicide is the story. The MURDER is the story. The suicide is really just tragic denouement.

[John Marzano Olympic Hero]

I really had no problem with the way King handled the first page of his column today. I actually thought that it was pretty decent and he did some very good reporting.

Um, he didn't just shoot himself in the head, he also shot his girlfriend nine times. King is acting like the suicide is the story. The MURDER is the story. The suicide is really just tragic denouement.

That's correct, but Peter King isn't a writer for the Kansas City Citizen. He writes a football column for Sports Illustrated, therefore his angle on the story should be on the football aspect of the tragedy. There are tons of places where you can read about the murder, but King finally uses his access to talk to Pioli, Crennel and Linta to get more information on why Belcher did this heinous act.

[Shelterdog]

I really had no problem with the way King handled the first page of his column today. I actually thought that it was pretty decent and he did some very good reporting.

The reporting he did about Saturday morning was great. The protracted discussion about what a good, hard-working guy Belcher was--all apparently taken from one thoroughly biased source (his agent)--was pure garbage.

[John Marzano Olympic Hero]

The reporting he did about Saturday morning was great. The protracted discussion about what a good, hard-working guy Belcher was--all apparently taken from one thoroughly biased source (his agent)--was pure garbage.

Again, I can agree with that. But for a guy who isn't well-known, it's important to get someone to talk about what type of a person he is. And yes, the agent is going to give you a bunch of crap about what a good guy his client is and how he can't believe he did this, but I think that's at least part of the story. This incident occurred less than 48 hours ago, even in our hyper fast world of getting info, stories like these take time to develop. I don't think that the true character study of Belcher will be realized until a month, maybe two, maybe six months from now.

And remember, his agent just lost a person who he was close to in the most gruesome way imaginable. I would think that he'd be shocked beyond belief and he's trying to wrap his arms around what, exactly, happened. Plus I wouldn't be surprised if Linta had some sort of guilt for how this unfolded. Put it this way, you know how when there is a brutal murder and the cops nab the killer and friends are always saying, "he seemed like such a nice guy." Most of the time they believe that's true, but a lot of the time they can't believe that someone they know just killed someone.

[DrewDawg]

He didn't really write a haiku about it did he? You added that, right?

He didn't use a gimmick portion of his column to write a haiku about the murdered woman?

Edited by DrewDawg, 03 December 2012 - 11:42 AM.

[soxfan121]

Again, I can agree with that. But for a guy who isn't well-known, it's important to get someone to talk about what type of a person he is. And yes, the agent is going to give you a bunch of crap about what a good guy his client is and how he can't believe he did this, but I think that's at least part of the story. This incident occurred less than 48 hours ago, even in our hyper fast world of getting info, stories like these take time to develop. I don't think that the true character study of Belcher will be realized until a month, maybe two, maybe six months from now.

James Brown, host of NFL Today on CBS, managed to handle this with professionalism and class, specifically mentioning the victim by name and denouncing domestic violence each time the topic came up on the scripted show.

King mentions the victim in passing, once, at the very end of his piece. And while it's not his job to talk about the non-football aspects, surely he could have found some way to display professionalism by not giving the victim a "second shout out" in a fucking haiku.

[tims4wins]

Exactly, SF. Here is how Bill Barnwell handled it:

It's impossible to talk about this weekend without noting the pall surrounding the games that came after the tragic murder-suicide that took place in Kansas City on Saturday. My thoughts go out to the families of Jovan Belcher and Kasandra Perkins, as well as the broader Chiefs organization. I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for Romeo Crennel and Gary Gibbs to prepare for Sunday's game given the circumstances, and it's remarkable that the Chiefs were able to show up and play, let alone claim their second win of the season over the Panthers. My sympathies also go out to the Cleveland Browns organization, where a member of the team's grounds crew committed suicide at the team facility Saturday morning.
I don't think I'm qualified or that it's appropriate to speculate as to what happened with Jovan Belcher on Saturday morning, but there is something I would like to say that admittedly doesn't fit the pithy tone of a silly column about a game. Nobody should have to go through the grief that the friends and family who loved these three people are dealing with right now. If you find yourself in a desperate situation, please, please, please seek help before you do something drastic. There are so many people and so many institutions dedicated to helping you make it through seemingly impossible situations, and many of them are a phone call away. Millions of people, including me, have been helped through bleak periods of depression by those outlets. I can't speak to what ailed Jovan Belcher, Kasandra Perkins, and their relationship, and what caused that member of the Browns organization to take his life this weekend. I know that they deserved longer, happier lives, and I hope that the next member of the league's community who struggles with these same issues gets the help that he or she deserves.

So much better.

Edit: bolded emphasis mine.

Edited by tims4wins, 03 December 2012 - 11:51 AM.

[lostjumper]

I didn't like the story, but it's a heck of a story, Jay Glazer's report that a Browns groundskeeper hanged himself at the Browns' practice facility Saturday.

Read More: http://sportsillustr...l#ixzz2E0aecUxh

WTF!!!

That is absolutely disgusting. There are so many words that could be chose, like horrible or tragic, but "heck of a story" is one of the worst ways he could have written that sentence. PK is pure garbage. He really sounds like he was excited by Glazer's story about a man who committed suicide.

[soxfan121]

WTF!!!

That is absolutely disgusting. There are so many words that could be chose, like horrible or tragic, but "heck of a story" is one of the worst ways he could have written that sentence. PK is pure garbage. He really sounds like he was excited by Glazer's story about a man who committed suicide.

Because that's his typical phrasing for when he IS excited or enamored with someone else's work. King, like most writers, has his patented phrases - "heck of a story" is a PK standard.

[John Marzano Olympic Hero]

James Brown, host of NFL Today on CBS, managed to handle this with professionalism and class, specifically mentioning the victim by name and denouncing domestic violence each time the topic came up on the scripted show.

King mentions the victim in passing, once, at the very end of his piece. And while it's not his job to talk about the non-football aspects, surely he could have found some way to display professionalism by not giving the victim a "second shout out" in a fucking haiku.

Seriously? Do we hate Peter King that much that if he doesn't denounce domestic violence we think that his omission is tantamount to supporting it? Jesus, man. For all of the things I've written and thought about Peter King, I don't think that as a husband and father of two women, King has to write, "Domestic violence is bad." No kidding. And if he did write that and prefaced it by telling us his "credentials" (two daughters, a wife) we would have (rightfully) lambasted him for making the story about him.

What King did in the first part of his MMQB was good reporting. He hunted around, he talked to people who were close to Belcher, he got the facts in a relatively short amount of time. There is very little editorializing in that part of the piece and IMO, that's good. Because unless King was going to go completely off the rails and has a "bitch had it coming" meltdown, then I know how he feels about murder, suicide and domestic abuse. Everyone in this thread does too.

And the haiku was dumb. I usually skip over them, but that was just bad.

[soxfan121]

My response JMOH is from earlier in the thread (emphasis added).

A huge problem the media has--and I think it goes beyond sports writing--is that they often appear to believe that if they report facts they've done their job, and that the emphasis/choice of topic is of no importance. (King tweeted this morning in response to a tweet accusing him of saying Belcher was a good guy "Not saying it does. Simply laying out what happened. U decide what to think"). Well here story selection is everything: every word spent on how goshdarn hardworking Belcher was is time not spent thinking about what he did, why he did it, or what happened to the victim.

There's nothing about Perkins, except her name. PK's reporting, even as a football writer, is missing some key facts. I referenced Brown's handling of the story to contrast how few words were needed to give the Belcher/football aspect full context. PK's story selection doesn't even hint at why PK was writing more than 1000 words about Belcher. He buries the lede, and yeah, that phrasing is intentional.

[Was (Not Wasdin)]

I liked his effort to minimize the greatness of the consecutive games with a touchdown pass streak, now that it is possible/likely that Brady will own it at some point (emphasis mine):

And Brady threw a touchdown pass in his 44th straight game, putting him 10 games from surpassing Drew Brees for a record that's probably treated with more reverence than it deserves, considering how the air is so filled with footballs these days.

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

Yeah, I'm sure if Favre owned that record he'd feel the same way.

[DrewDawg]

In fairness to King, in the run up to Brees breaking the record he said the same types of things.

However, that doesn't excuse him doing that sick haiku.

[Average Reds]

Seriously? Do we hate Peter King that much that if he doesn't denounce domestic violence we think that his omission is tantamount to supporting it? Jesus, man. For all of the things I've written and thought about Peter King, I don't think that as a husband and father of two women, King has to write, "Domestic violence is bad." No kidding. And if he did write that and prefaced it by telling us his "credentials" (two daughters, a wife) we would have (rightfully) lambasted him for making the story about him.

I think this is a mischaracterization of why people are upset at King.

King is trying to be a reporter here - no question about that. And he's not trying to offend people. But he's so tone-deaf that he doesn't realize that by talking about Belcher as if he was the victim of a terrible tragedy, he obscures what we already know - that he is the perpetrator.

King just doesn't have the sensitivity or finesse to pull this off in the best of circumstances. But for him to barely mention Kasandra Perkins and then to toss in an ill-considered haiku at the end is, IMO, almost shockingly offensive.

[loshjott]

King's reporting of the suicide was excellent. Clearly his source describing those moments in the parking lot was either Pioli or someone in the police department. This is one instance where he used his access to NFL personnel (or one of his readers with inside knowledge of the situation) to do some solid reporting.

[PBDWake]

Hitting epic levels of douchery on twitter over this.

Peter King ‏@SI_PeterKing
RT @BFT: A Haiku? 3 paragraphs on the killer and a Haiku for the victim? ... Oh, the humanity.

[TheWinkleman]

Yeah, I don't know which is worse: writing that haiku or mocking people who have a problem with it. He didn't budge an inch on twitter in response to complaints about his handling of the Belcher story. I can't tell if he's trolling, tone deaf, believes he's beyond criticism, or some combination of the three. Regardless, he's an arrogant asshole. A simple "sorry if it came off that way to you, not my intention" can work wonders.

Here are some others:

@SI_PeterKing:

Re criticism for Belcher news: It's reporting, not judging. A player shot himself in the head. I tried to learn facts about it. That is all.

RT @JebusHChrist: King opens MMQB with mad love for Belcher. Hard worker. Loving boyfriend. Grateful employee. Forgot murderer. #shameful

And just this last one ... RT @JohnWDurkee: You should ghost write Rae Carruth's autobio.

RT @psimp8871: Amazing how you don't see that writing a haiku might come across as you making light of the situation ... Yes. Just amazing.

For good measure, let's retweet SlapaBitch! Seriously...

Peter King ‏@SI_PeterKing
RT @SlapaBitch92: check this out. As troubles at home simmered, Chiefs tried to help Javon Belcher: http://bit.ly/Tz1dca ... Great work.

Edited by TheWinkleman, 04 December 2012 - 11:23 AM.

[Corsi]

The stupid haiku doesn't even make sense. "Romeo remembered her"? What does that even mean?

[Corsi]

"Crennel spoke to me Sunday after the Chiefs game"

God, I hate that phrasing. He does this all the time, too. Peter, you spoke to Crennel, not the other way around.

In his sick twisted mind, the events unfolded like this: "Scott, you call 911. I gotta call Peter!"

[coremiller]

What's amazing is that his takeaway from that KC Star story is not that Belcher and Perkins had a history of relationship problems (which to me is by far the most important fact in there), or that Belcher kissed his girlfriend and apologized to her after he shot her (the most depressing image by far), or that his his mother witnessed the whole scene, but that the Chiefs tried to help. Everything to him is about football and filtered through a football-centric perspective and King sees everything from the perspective of his buddies in the Chiefs organization. But focusing on the football has the effect of erasing the victim, since she has nothing to do with football. The football team is really only incidental to the main story. But since King only knows football, that makes King incidental and unimportant, and he is incapable of accepting that.

[DrewDawg]

Apparently the "hard working, loving boyfriend" was out all night with another woman before he came home and shot his child's mother.

[BannedbyNYYFans.com]

In his sick twisted mind, the events unfolded like this: "Scott, you call 911. I gotta call Peter!"

[Reverend]

There is a possible solution set that explains everything if we accept that Peter King believes his haiku was an homage of enormous gravitas. Then it would all make sense.

[Corsi]

There is a possible solution set that explains everything if we accept that Peter King believes his haiku was an homage of enormous gravitas. Then it would all make sense.

Edited by Corsi, 04 December 2012 - 01:40 PM.

[Shelterdog]

There is a possible solution set that explains everything if we accept that Peter King believes his haiku was an homage of enormous gravitas. Then it would all make sense.

Yeah but then we'd have to believe that King views himself as a literary giant who is above the normal conventions of etiquette.

[E5 Yaz]

Re Kasandra Perkins, I didn't know much about her, and the job I have -- on Saturday and Sunday of a football weekend -- is to find out as much as I can about the football player and the football team. My editors at the magazine and the website and bosses at NBC are not asking me for a long story or inside information on the life of Kasandra Perkins. Now, as to me not castigating Belcher and throwing stones at him for murdering Perkins, many of you may be right with your opinion that I should have ripped him harshly. My column was about getting you as much information as I knew Sunday night and Monday morning.

http://sportsillustr...l#ixzz2E6sd2q7v

[drleather2001]

http://sportsillustr...l#ixzz2E6sd2q7v

If Peter King has set any single precedent over the past 3-4 years in his MMQB columns, it is this: Peter King will take it upon himself to talk about anything he wants to talk about. If there is something on King's mind, he will let you know it in his column, be it beer, travel, movies, music, politics, law, running, whatever. Nothing is off limits. So, by virtue of the fact that he didn't feel it necessary or appropriate to discuss the victim of the shooting at all, except for cheesy, weak, Haiku at the very end, that tells me that it wasn't particularly important to him. The omission was deafening. And while that might not make him a bad football reporter, it does make him a fucking asshole.

Edited to respond to Yaz's post.

Edited by drleather2001, 04 December 2012 - 01:48 PM.

[E5 Yaz]

My editors at the magazine and the website and bosses at NBC are not asking me for a long story or inside information on the life of Kasandra Perkins.

I bet his bosses are thrilled to be thrown under the bus like this.

Now, as to me not castigating Belcher and throwing stones at him for murdering Perkins, many of you may be right with your opinion that I should have ripped him harshly.

I love the "throwing stones" reference. Yes, because we're all without sin, we can't call Belcher a murderer.

[Mystic Merlin]

It seems like his 'editors at the magazine and the website and bosses at NBC' let him write and say whatever the hell he wants.

[Reverend]

If Peter King has set any single precedent over the past 3-4 years in his MMQB columns, it is this: Peter King will take it upon himself to talk about anything he wants to talk about. If there is something on King's mind, he will let you know it in his column, be it beer, travel, movies, music, politics, law, running, whatever. Nothing is off limits. So, by virtue of the fact that he didn't feel it necessary or appropriate to discuss the victim of the shooting at all, except for cheesy, weak, Haiku at the very end, that tells me that it wasn't particularly important to him. The omission was deafening. And while that might not make him a bad football reporter, it does make him a fucking asshole.

It seems like his 'editors at the magazine and the website and bosses at NBC' let him write and say whatever the hell he wants.

His editors should unilaterally change the title of the column to "It's good to be King."

[E5 Yaz]

It seems like his 'editors at the magazine and the website and bosses at NBC' let him write and say whatever the hell he wants.

True. But since he had already said his job was to report on the football player (which is true), did he have to double-down and say that he didn't write about her because he knows his bosses wouldn't want it?

[DrewDawg]

I like where he wrote that a "vast majority" of his readers thought he was sympathetic to Belcher and he said he wasn't.

If you write something and the "vast majority" think you meant the exact opposite of what you apparently meant, that's on you as a writer.

Edited by DrewDawg, 04 December 2012 - 02:03 PM.

[E5 Yaz]

I like where he wrote that a "vast majority" of his readers thought he was sympathetic to Belcher and he said he wasn't.

If you write something and the "vast majority" think your meant the exact opposite of what you apparently meant, that's on you.

Yes. Just amazing.

[Dan Murfman]

Peter King and Chris Russo talking gun control. Riveting

[Average Reds]

Peter King and Chris Russo talking gun control. Riveting

I'm betting it's like listening to 5 year olds talk about economic policy.