In 1973, mob rule was commonplace in small towns such as Wheeling, WV and it engendered immense levels of fear and anxiety among residents. On one hand, some people chose to join the mobs while others were influenced by the actions of those groups. Some of the groups garnered a familial sense in that progeny followed in the footsteps of their kin, most of them accustomed to it as a way of life; however, some former mob members recognized the err of their ways and tried to discourage others from entering it.
Take Johnny Mesange, for example, who left his life in the mob and is now watching his son J.J. Jenkins begin to immerse himself in the lifestyle. He is not sure how to feel about him joining mob boss Paul Verbania and falling in love with his mistress Leslie Fitzpatrick, a haphazard decision caustic to the safety and wellbeing of he and others in the community.
Although the story told in the forthcoming book Father of Mine is fictional, its contents are based on true events. In fact, the idea for the story was contrived by Mike Florio – an NFL commentator on NBC Sports and owner of ProFootballTalk – when he was in a deep slumber on the night of his birthday. In the middle of the night, he began experiencing a particularly vivid dream about his father, who really had been a bookie for a mob in Wheeling.
“When you wake up, it was like you actually lived it but it was so ridiculous that it doesn’t make any sense, and if you try to tell somebody about it, nobody cares,” Florio said. “It was one of those moments, but it had elements in it that made me think, ‘You know what? In a weird sort of way, there’s a story to be told in all of this.’”
In June 2020, the sports world had come to a screeching halt due to the unmitigated spread of COVID-19. While sports eventually did make their return, most did so without fans at venues, and there were a litany of rules and regulations in place to ensure participants and employees would remain healthy. The National Football League was in the midst of its offseason and working to safeguard its players and personnel for the upcoming season.
There were no offseason programs across the league over that summer. With an inordinate amount of free time on his hands, Florio, who had authored various other nonfiction books about the sport, decided to write a fictional story in a first person point of view. His ability to be receptive towards criticism and the exactitudes in the passion he has for storytelling resulted in changing course entirely after the first draft, introducing perspectives from other characters to effectuate a broader parlance and understanding of the situation.
“This thing’s had a three-year life cycle where it goes from the original draft, and it’s hard to be critical of your own writing because your inclination is, ‘I put all this time into it; why would I tear it down and rebuild it? I’ve already put the time in; I’ve already done it,’” Florio expressed. “I think pride can be a very dangerous element when you’re talking about something like this. I think you have to be willing to go back and push yourself to make it better.”
Throughout his life, Florio has been an avid reader and possesses an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, whether it be about professional football or extraneous topics. He wants to make an impact on readers and hopes to establish himself as a trusted, reputable storyteller in works of imagination, fact-based reporting and erudite opinement alike.
“I know how I enjoy the experience of having a book that gets me immersed and engrossed,” Florio said. “I don’t want to put it down, but I also do want to put it down because I’m going to finish it and then I’m going to have to find something else to read. I know how hard it is to find a book that sparks that kind of zeal to just get fully immersed in it.”
While Florio had a nascent interest in football and grew up watching myriad contests, he never pursued a career in sports media and effectively stumbled into it by accident. He attended Carnegie Mellon University where he graduated with multiple degrees focused in engineering, and enrolled in West Virginia University to study law. When he began studying the law, it was the first time in his young life Florio saw any clarity about his future, and he proceeded to have great success in the profession.
In April 2000, Florio remembers discovering NFLTalk.com through AOL, a website featuring digital articles about players and teams across the National Football League. He would often consume it during his lunch break, and had the perspicacity to send the website a writing sample on a whim when it advertised openings. As an attorney practicing labor law, Florio was familiar with what it took to compile the information and testimony necessary to conceive a thorough discernment of events and how to evoke congruent imagery in the courtroom.
The storytelling he was transitioning into pertained solely to professional football writing for a completely different audience. Having that awareness guided Florio on how to transmit information, intersperse opinion and appeal in a clear and concise manner. Few people outside of the legal spectrum generally engage with content in courts – reporters, scholars and students notwithstanding. The parlance imbued in the American legal system greatly contrasts with that of quotidian patois, posing a quandary to Florio about how to define “good writing.” Answering this question has been essential in building a successful, multiplatform career spanning sports media and now, fiction writing. The answers he has found have formed the basis on which he constructs every piece of content he produces.
The premise can be thought of in a variety of ways. Some would say good writing includes a strong lexicon and command of the English language; others would argue it is less about the language and more focused on fostering a connection with the audience. Experienced writers find their niche and establish distinctive styles conducive to the task at hand, but most do not discover this on their first day. In taking an atypical path into a dynamic industry predicated on promulgating news, opinion and analysis as it pertains to sports, Florio knew that no matter his style, he needed to keep people interested. For inspiration, he looked to various mentors in sports media, including Peter King of NBC Sports (formerly of Sports Illustrated), but did not want to perturb those in the industry and usually embarked on new endeavors through trial and error.
“I was always kind of an interloper and a disruptor, and I really wasn’t looking for mentors in the classic sense because I was coming into an established business through a new pathway that people in the established business probably didn’t appreciate,” Florio said. “I always kind of kept to myself and tried to make my own way.”
One person Florio considers a bonafide mentor is Bruce Springsteen, one of the most beloved rock artists and live performers ever.. Despite not being able to read music, he is a savant when it comes to sketching out melodies and pairing them with metrical, compendious poetry. What makes Springsteen an icon though, is undoubtedly his stellar consistency, and it is something to which aspiring and existing sports media professionals can take heed.
“That’s required musical catalog for any sports writer,” Florio said of Springsteen, who recently became the first artist to have a No. 1 album in five consecutive decades. “It’s an artist I’ve discovered just in the past few years. There is such a brilliant simplicity in his lyrics, and that has really been a guide for me. As you construct a story, it doesn’t have to have big, flowery words to be good writing. It’s just how you tell the stories; how you press the buttons of the reader; and how you get them engaged in turning one page to the next.”
Especially in today’s era where people generally garner disinterest towards monotonous content, it is crucial that authors captivate consumers at the start of a piece of content. That is what Florio wants from every piece posted at ProFootballTalk.
“The most important relationship is the relationship with the audience,” Florio said. “To me, that’s more important than anything else – it has to be one that’s founded on trust, authenticity, originality and ultimately giving the people what they want. I think one of the reasons so many media outlets have failed over the years is they get mixed up in failing to give their audience what their audience wants.”
At the same time, Florio and other columnists need to stay aware of the circuitry of information, meaning they cannot devote all of their time on one topic. Since 2004, Florio estimates he has written tens of thousands of columns for the website – about 12 to 20 per day – and has worked every day to curate and produce compelling and engaging content to serve the audience. The impermanence of today’s reporting keeps Florio motivated to stay in the cognizance and psyche of readers, while simultaneously inspiring him to embark on long-term projects with the intent of fixating himself in the content ecosystem.
“Everything I write today is meaningless by tomorrow,” Florio said. “Everything I write tomorrow is meaningless by the next day. Nobody’s going back and reading something I wrote from six months ago saying, ‘Wow, that’s a really great, well-crafted and well-formed story that you have there.’ No, it’s meaningless. All they want to see is what you’re writing today because it’s driven by the information you’re providing.”
Florio hopes his book serves the same purpose — as an outlet for people to take enjoyment and find an escape in their day, but he wants the story told in Father of Mine to have a little more staying power both for the audience and for the culture at large.
One venture he has not had the opportunity to become involved in is the world of cinematography. While it is largely out of his control, making it to the silver screen is a goal Florio has for himself, along with interspersing his creative expertise.
“I think anybody that writes a novel likes to think of how it would look if it were a movie or a TV show,” Florio said. “A lot of what we consume comes that way, and I think everything I’ve written would be conducive to something like that.”
Whether it is as a lawyer, journalist or entrepreneur, Mike Florio has followed a basic principle – outworking his competition in order to find success. Through it all, he has built meaningful and enduring relationships, and stayed true to himself. As his book, Father of Mine, prepares to hit shelves on April 25, he will pause to recognize the moment but quickly pick up a pen and resume masterfully crafting and telling stories in a variety of different ways. All of it hinges on the ability to create and maintain relationships.
“The challenge is to do your job the right way without undermining relationships, and that can be difficult from time to time,” Florio said. “People do have hard feelings, and sometimes you do damage that has to be undone and sometimes you have some difficult conversations.”
Derek Futterman is an associate editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, email Derek@BarrettMedia.com or find him on X @derekfutterman.
