Peter King spent four days during Super Bowl Week with Shane Newell, a graduate student in Stanford’s Journalism Program. Newell chauffeured King, as he served as pool reporter for the Denver Broncos practices at Stanford Stadium in advance of Super Bowl 50. In exchange for driving King between his San Francisco hotel and Palo Alto and San José, Newell was granted access to him, observing King at work, and interviewing him about his career as a sportswriter and whether he might leave the MMQB when his contract expires in March.
King has built a powerful brand as an NFL insider writing his Monday Morning Quarterback column online for MMQB, a website that attracts three million unique visitors per month, and appearing in studio on NBC’s “Football Night in America”. He also sends out tweets to his 1.68 million Twitter followers. His three-year deal with SI expires this month and he’s considering all options, including the possibility of leaving SI. His goal is to make a decision by the end of the week.
King said “Part of what I think about is, ‘Should I do something else?’ ‘Should I try some other thing?’ ‘Should I try to do more television than I’ve done?’” “There are times when I say, ‘This has become a monster and I really should sort of scale back,’” he says of the column. King adds that the workload is enormous but when he finishes a column, he feels like he’s made a good contribution to people’s intelligence about pro football.
He’s known to pull all-nighters every Sunday evening during the NFL season, finishing his MMQB column in the wee hours. He also spends a month each summer visiting NFL training camps, and travels twice a month during the regular season, including watching the games most Sunday’s at the NBC Studios in Stamford, Connecticut.
There are other interests that King says he’d like to explore too. He told his wife Ann that he may want to cover the 2020 presidential election. “I don’t know if I’d be any good at it, but I think it would be fun” he says. He also dreams about the possibility of covering a full major league baseball season.
King acknowledged that there is a chance he could move to NBC full-time, bringing his NFL column to NBC’s website and doing more television work for the network. If he does remain with MMQB, King wants to see more videos and podcasts produced on the site.
To read the entire piece by Shane Newell, make sure to visit the Peninsula Press. It’s an excellent article.
