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As dusk turned to dawn on Sunday mornings, Peter King knew he was in for a long day. Recapping an entire week in the NFL spanned beyond the games, and it was his responsibility to compile information, build relationships and make observations to inform the audience. Crafting pieces of longform journalism on a short deadline without a defined roadmap was a strenuous task, but it was apparent that the demand for and impact of King’s NFL columns was realized around the world.
Because of the fact that his column was distributed on Monday mornings, it was incumbent on King not to lag behind on his work. Prior to a Sunday slate of games, he would have 6,000 words of his column completed, largely facilitated by the news, rumors and transactions taking place during a given league week.
After a busy Saturday consumed by writing and reporting, King would get some rest, walk his dog on Sunday morning and then settle in to watch the action. By the time Sunday Night Football took place, he needed to decide if the contest was worth writing about and would sometimes be on the phone with players or coaches after the game at 12:15 a.m. There were instances where he turned off the game and focused on the remainder of his column, which would often take much of the night to complete.
“I think one of the things I wanted to make sure that I did was there’s a lot of people who are writing about this game or that game only on Sunday or about the games only, and I like to write about a lot of the other things in football,” King said, “and so that’s kind of what I did, and that is the way I had the ability to, usually, I would guess I would write between 5,000 and 5,500 words between noon on Sunday and 3 a.m. Monday, and that’s kind of how I did it.”
King had already been writing an NFL column for Sports Illustrated upon being hired as a staff writer in 1989. In the preceding years, he had demonstrated his worth and became the youngest senior writer in magazine history. When Time Warner merged the CNN and Sports Illustrated brands to create a new sports news network, King’s football editor, Steve Robinson, asked if he would be able to make a contribution to the new venture. He asked King to essentially empty his reporting notebook and create a separate column at the end of every week, a task King agreed to for which he was not paid more money.
“None of us can know what the business is going to be like in eight or 10 years, so if somebody asks you to do it, unless you’ve got some incredibly good reason to not do it, do it, and that’s kind of the lesson of this,” King said. “That was 1997, and then honestly that’s a lot more [of] what I’m known for now than anything else I ever did in my career.”
After more than four decades as a reporter and writer, King officially retired following the 2023 season. Reflecting on the move, he feels he made the right decision and acknowledged that he had other inclinations he aspired to pursue. King referenced several journalists such as Paul Zimmerman and Don Banks who essentially died on the job, along with his two brothers and father who all passed away by the age of 65. On top of that, he walked out of Super Bowl LVIII from Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas to conclude last season and went straight to the hospital with double pneumonia.
“Look, everybody does what they want to do,” King said. “I’m not saying that other people should do it, but I just really thought that I wanted to do some other things in life. I really don’t know what they are. I don’t know exactly what I am going to do, but I’m just sort of taking it easy looking around.”
Over the last several months, King has been part of several volunteer efforts, including trying to raise money to bring back sports that were eliminated due to budget cuts in his hometown. King also has more plans to travel throughout the year and explore different parts of the United States, something that would not be possible if he were covering the NFL for NBC. Stepping back from the daily grind, he recognizes that his career deviated from his initial prediction; however, most of his success can be tied to an indefatigable work ethic.
One of King’s journalism professors at Ohio University informed him that his occupation was to take people where they could not go and tell them what they did not know. Trying not to lose sight of that, he ensured his information was accurate before dissemination and that he was always seeking out the best modes of storytelling.
Adam Schefter, senior NFL insider at ESPN, is someone King considers to be the gold standard in football whom he can implicitly trust in the spread of information. Schefter’s longtime colleague Adrian Wojnarowski, who covered the NBA, recently retired from the news business to become the general manager of the men’s basketball program at St. Bonaventure University, his alma mater.
“It’s one of those things where you ask yourself, ‘If you don’t really have to work and you want to do something else or you think you might want to do something else, well why keep doing what you’re doing, even if you love it?’ and I did love it,” King said. “The day I quit, I loved it. I never did anything but love it, so I’m just going to try something different. Maybe it’ll be a great move, maybe it’ll be a dumb move. I don’t know, but we’ll see.”
As King continued demonstrating his propensity for writing captivating pieces in different genres, he gained more knowledge about what appealed to the audience. Part of that came in including personal anecdotes, such as recapping his daughter’s tournament softball games and honoring the life of the family dog. Out of all the emails he would receive, there was a stark dichotomy between those who enjoyed the variation and others who wanted the column to be solely focused on football.
“I just always felt like – and I hate to say this because it sounds selfish – I was going to write what I wanted to write understanding that people are coming there to read about football, and the vast majority of the columns, they were going to get football,” King said. “….You had to know that I was going to be able, hopefully, to tell you things when you woke up the morning after the Super Bowl, I was going to be able to tell you things you didn’t know, and so that really is kind of what I hoped to do with the column, and I hope that is a bit of its legacy.”
Proven as a perennial storyteller in sports media, King founded an expanded version of “The Monday Morning Quarterback” and was given a budget to hire writers for the online platform. Acting as a talent evaluator, he agreed to bring on reporters such as Jenny Vrentas, Robert Klemko and Emily Kaplan, all of whom made contributions to help grow the Sports Illustrated vertical. Granting young professionals a chance in the business, many of them elevated their profiles and proceeded to join other outlets and specialize in different areas of coverage.
“In today’s world, I think you’re better off quite honestly hiring young people who are hungry than you are hiring people who essentially have already gotten to the promised land to some degree,” King articulated, “and I’m not saying they’re not as good as the people I hired – they are – but I love giving young people a chance, and I think an awful lot of them ran with it.”
In 2018, King left Sports Illustrated after 29 years and signed an exclusive agreement with NBC Sports where he continued writing his Monday morning football column and also appearing across television and radio platforms. Coinciding with the start of Sunday Night Football on NBC in 2006, King had been contributing long features to the Football Night in America studio show and also making guest appearances across multiple platforms for the company.
“They have the best system of helping you and boosting you and making sure that you have every opportunity to succeed, and whether it’s Fred Gaudelli for years helping all these young people in talent to really learn about how to do TV,” King said, “and also they’re just so many people there who are focused on helping the product to be excellent.”
King divulged that NBC Sports gave him the option to cut his weekly column in half, down from the approximate 11,000-word composition he would write. No matter the company for whom he worked, he was not interested in knowing data pertaining to engagement time or other readership surveys. Instead, he simply focused on his role as a writer and sought to elicit coherent, accurate thoughts on a weekly basis. As a result, when he was approached with the proposed changes, he acknowledged that he would not enjoy the work as much and surmised its quality would suffer.
“If I was still doing it, might I have done that? Maybe, but I just enjoyed sort of the one-size-fits-all aspect of what I did,” King said. “But again, I firmly believe that there’s not a lot of people today who want to spend 45 minutes reading 11,000 words. I don’t think it’s one of those things in today’s journalism [that] is sustainable, which is why I probably came along at the right time and why I probably got out at the right time.”
Although King does not foresee himself returning to write another column in the future, he remains attuned to the dynamic nature of journalism and stresses the indispensable nature of determination and concentration. It is essential to wear blinders and remain focused on the job rather than what other people think in addition to never forsaking journalistic tenets. In viewing the landscape today, he regards ESPN analyst Ben Solak and FOX Sports reporter Tom Rinaldi as talented media professionals and effective storytellers.
“You got to learn to write,” King avouched, “and if you don’t know how to write whether you’re working on television; whether you’re working in radio and writing scripts for radio or working for a podcast, this is still a communications business, and you need to communicate cogently and intelligently, and I think that becomes hugely important.”
Rather than sharing his thoughts by virtue of the written word, King has returned to the audio medium as a co-host of the Let’s Go! podcast with SiriusXM for the NFL season. Working with Jim Gray, Maxx Crosby and Bill Belichick, he watches the NFL games on Sunday, writes about two pages of notes and sends it out to the team ahead of the show. On the next day, he records the episode and provides thoughts on matters around the league. One of King’s recent observations was related to comments made by Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield regarding a purported tense atmosphere surrounding the team when Tom Brady was in the position.
“Those are the kind of things that I see,” King said. “I said, ‘What in the world is going on here?,’ and we’re able to talk about it, so those are the things that are fun.”
Whereas the NFL schedule oftentimes crafted his workflow, King is no longer beholden by the countdown to kickoff and instead living life naturally. Outside of the weekly podcast with SiriusXM, he is not inextricably tied to the league and action every week. In reflecting on his career though, it is apparent that King has impacted generations of football fans and the anecdotes they crave, stories from behind closed doors that add context to the results. After 40 years telling stories on the gridiron, King is creating his own memories outside of the press box and exploring the other twists and turns life has to offer.
“I have nothing that I say, ‘Oh my God, my life won’t be complete unless I do ‘X,’’ so I don’t know,” King shared. “I wish I could answer your question, but I’m kind of letting life happen to me for a little while, and then I’ll figure it out.”
Derek Futterman is a contributing 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, find him on X @derekfutterman.
