While Jay Glazer is famous for his work as an insider on FOX NFL Sunday, his journey to get to that point shows where hard work and a dedication to never giving up can take you once your foot is in the door.
Glazer was a guest on The Adam Schefter Podcast to talk about his new book, Unbreakable: How I Turned My Depression and Anxiety into Motivation and You Can Too and he got into the origin of how he got into the sports business.
When Glazer was covering the Giants for the New York Post, he knew he did not have the same experience as other reporters, so he had to find a different way to stand out. He did it in a way that now seems normal to any reporter, but was not common in the late 90’s:
“When I walked in the Giants locker room early on, I said, man, I don’t have the same education as everyone else, I don’t have the same experience,” Glazer recalled. “How can I be different? If these guys work 9-5, I’m not going to outwork them by a little, I’m going to outwork them by a lot. I’ll be here at 7 a.m. till Strahan drops me off at 9 p.m. because I couldn’t afford bus or subway fare both ways. Michael would drive me in every single day. He understands my plight. That’s a great friend right there.
“I also said I’m going to build relationships with people. I think back then, it was taboo to have relationships with players and coaches. In New York, it was taboo to do that. I said, well, that’s where I am going to be different. I’m going to build relationships and over time, more scoops would come from those relationships.”
After Glazer was at the New York Post, he got a full-time job as the NFL insider for CBS SportsLine beginning in 1999. While he wasn’t on TV, he was able to do something different that changed the media landscape:
“What that allowed me to do is become the first minute-by-minute breaking news guy in America, Me vs. Len Pasquarelli and John Clayton of ESPN… That was the birth of what we do,” said Glazer. “There was no crawl before us. You newspaper guys used to get pissed at us because you guys would file something at 6 p.m. and then we break something at 10 p.m. at night so your back page would be moot. We started an industry with this. We raised access for everybody. We changed it into a relationship-based business.”
Despite Glazer competing with ESPN and other media outlets to be first with stories, he still calls Adam Schefter before the beginning of the season to wish him good luck. In fact, Schefter says Glazer was the one who is the most responsible for the credit system on ESPN’s bottomline:
“I tried to make it into a fight, me vs. all of ESPN, David vs. Goliath,” Glazer said. “People don’t know Adam and I talk before every season. I call you up and say to you and Mort, good luck. We need each other because we need opponents. We need to fight someone. Let’s do it clean. We can all get rich and do it the right way. Let’s make sure we get all of our stuff right.”
