NFL "Insiders" Are Not Real Reporters | Bobby Burack
Each year, the free agency period in the NFL illustrates the silliness of the rat race that is the scoop game.
There's an entire industry of "insiders," as they're called, from Ian Rapoport of NFL Network to Adam Schefter of ESPN, from Jonathan Jones of CBS to Jay Glazer of Fox Sports.
The job requires them to frantically await text messages, emails and phone calls from sources that give them a heads-up about a transaction regarding a player or a team.
They then post the news on social media, just minutes before players and teams confirm. Mere seconds separate one insider's report from another.
And yet, their employers care a great deal about who posted the story at 01:52:53 and who posted at 01:52:55. Executives keep a tally, and factor said tally into upcoming contract negotiations.
Per a Washington Post article in 2022:
"With so much at stake, the competition for scoops is fierce. One agent told of hearing NFL reporters call begging for scoops, even saying their own upcoming contract negotiations were dependent on their ability to break news. When Sports Illustrated followed Schefter around during the opening day of NFL free agency a few years ago, the story described [ESPN exec Seth] Markman awarding "points" to reporters based on how many signings they broke. The tally, according to the story, found Schefter far ahead. But Ian Rapoport, NFL Network’s insider, went through Markman’s math and believed the tally hadn’t given him proper credit; he sought a correction from Sports Illustrated.
The job is intense.
But while "credit for scoops" matters to insiders, agents, executives, and media reporters – the list ends there. Fans do not care. Why would they?
Consider that the biggest scoop thus far in free agency was the Kansas City Chiefs re-signing defensive tackle Chris Jones. Do you remember who tweeted the news first?
Of course, you don't.
ESPN, NFL Network, CBS, and SI all take credit for the scoop. However, no level-headed fan with a personal life takes the time to check who was first to copy and paste said news.
What about the Kirk Cousins to the Falcons report? Do you remember who broke that first? What about the Steelers signing Russell Wilson?
Who reports the initial scoop has never mattered less, particularly with the barrage of aggregators that regurgitate each scoop within a millisecond. Dov Kleiman, MLFootball and JA Football are just some of the notable NFL aggregators.
Fans want the news. They don't care on whose X account they first see it.
Now, that is not a knock on original reporting. The few reporters who still pull the curtain back and give readers access to information that they otherwise wouldn't know remain distinctly impressive.
However, insiders do not do that.
By and large, insiders "report" what they are allowed to report – what is source-approved.
Last week, SI reporter Matt Verderame detailed some agents texted multiple insiders in a group chat with the same language and news, thus given the same opportunity to post first.
Greg Zuerlein's agent thought he received a "nice raise."
Simply put, most insiders are pawns.
Last year, the Los Angeles Times obtained an email from 2011 in which Adam Schefter emailed a complete draft of a story about the NFL lockout to then-Redskins president Bruce Allen. He allowed Allen to edit and make changes to his report.
"Please let me know if you see anything that should be added, changed, tweaked," Schefter wrote. "Thanks, Mr. Editor, for that and the trust. Plan to file this to espn about 6 am …."
That's not journalism. That's puppetry.
We certainly don't fault insiders for doing their job. Some insiders earn large salaries for their dedication.
ESPN pays Adam Schefter around $10 million a year, sources tell OutKick. So does his NBA counterpart Adrian Wojnarowski, another 24/7 insider who can hardly enjoy a picnic without interruption.
However, the advent of insiders and de-emphasization of real reporters is wholly negative for the industry. Insiders are how subjects manipulate the coverage of themselves.
Players, teams, and agents feared what journalists knew. Newspaper writers like Mitch Albom and Michael Wilbon put forth information that their subjects wanted buried.
Meanwhile, insiders fear their sources. They know if they upset a source, their name could be removed from the pre-eminent text chains. At that point, they'll be too late to claim they broke a signing first.
Mike Florio further detailed how said phenomenon works last week:
Now you see why insiders report the non-guaranteed portion of a contract as opposed to the guaranteed portion, which is all that matters in the NFL: it's a request from their source.
Reporting real news with inconvenient facts is risky.
A risk most insiders aren't willing to take.
So, while the insiders duke it out to break where Hollywood Brown signs a minute before he posts the news himself, fans are left mostly in the dark about what actually goes on within an NFL locker room and franchise.