Big sports media news continued to drop Thursday as Peter King, the dean of NFL sportswriters, jumped to NBC Sports from Sports Illustrated.
Beginning in July, King will exclusively write his Monday Morning Quarterback column for NBCSports.com. He'll appear on NBC's "Football Night in America" Sunday night pregame show and NBC Sports Radio's "PFT Live with Mike Florio."
“As one of the best NFL reporters in history, Peter’s information, storytelling, and analysis make us better across the board,” Sam Flood, executive producer and president, production, for NBC Sports and NBCSN, said in a statement. “With Peter expanding his NBC Sports presence from Football Night to PFT Live and digital, football fans are the big winners.”
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During his 29-year SI career, King became the country's leading NFL writer. Both NBC and ESPN tried to hire King in 2012, but he reworked his deal with SI to gain more autonomy, launching The MMQB microsite in 2013.
With SI now under different ownership, things have changed. King is poised to leave the publisher with which he became a household name. He wrote a long statement explaining his decision on SI.com:
"When Sports Illustrated was good enough to allow me to start The MMQB five years ago, I wanted to introduce a group of promising young journalists to the SI audience and give them a chance to develop into prominent voices on the pro football scene,” King says. “We're fortunate now that Jenny Vrentas, Robert Klemko, Andy Benoit, Albert Breer, Conor Orr, Jonathan Jones, Tim Rohan, Jacob Feldman and Kalyn Kahler—average age: 30—have grown into an excellent team, with a group of superb editors. It's time for them to have the opportunities I've had over the years, and to do some of the stories and projects I've done that they're more than ready to do. They're ready.
"I just felt it was time to move on from the 24/7-ness of football coverage and try something a little bit different. My 29 years at Sports Illustrated have been, collectively, a dream come true. I'll always be grateful to Mark Mulvoy for hiring a green 31-year-old kid in 1989, just as I'm grateful to my current boss, Chris Stone, for the opportunities and support he's given me in recent years. For three decades, I've had the job of a lifetime in the sports media business, and I will be forever grateful to SI. I leave at the end of May with immense gratitude to my editors over the years and to my staff at The MMQB since 2013. Thanks, from the bottom of my heart.''
The King announcement capped a busy day of sports media changes. ESPN announced it was hiring Jason Witten, who is retiring from the Cowboys, to succeed the departed Jon Gruden as color analyst for "Monday Night Football." CBS Sports announced the hiring of ex-Cardinals coach Bruce Arians as an NFL game analyst. Arians will work with Greg Gumbel and Trent Green.
