addressed the manner<\/a> in which the aggregators had reacted to my effort to steer Chris Simms on PFT Live as he was potentially deviating from the known and reported facts about the controversy involving Russini and Patriots coach Mike Vrabel. They believed (or pretended to believe) that I\u2019d reached through the camera and applied a concrete muzzle to Simms, just as he was about to make some dramatic revelation that would have provided a definitive solution to the entire situation (along with a clip they could steal and post).<\/p>\nThe truth was far less interesting. I practiced law for 19 years. I know where the line is. I was trying to keep my co-host and friend away from it, by getting him to stick to what was known and\/or properly vetted and reported. <\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t silence him. He could have then said whatever he wanted to say. (And the first thing he said to me after I told him to \u201cstay on target\u201d was to \u201cshut the hell up.\u201d) <\/p>\n
He also could have said whatever he wanted to say on his own Twitter page. On his Instagram account. On his own podcast. He was free to say whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted. <\/p>\n
At that specific moment, my goal was to protect my co-host and friend from accidentally saying something that isn\u2019t known and\/or hasn\u2019t been properly vetted and reported. Such comments can have consequences, potentially in the form of a civil lawsuit for defamation.<\/p>\n
Fast forward to Monday. Chris announced on PFT Live that he won\u2019t be on Football Night in America this season. It\u2019s part of the broader overhaul of the show. It started with Tony Dungy\u2019s announcement that he won\u2019t be back, and it continued with NBC\u2019s announcement that Mike Tomlin has joined the show \u2014 and that the show will go on the road every week this season.<\/p>\n
Somehow, the two threads have been tied together into the asinine (to put it mildly) notion that Chris was \u201cfired by NBC\u201d because I told him to \u201cstay on target\u201d when we were discussing the Vrabel-Russini situation in the very early days of a story that has lingered for 23 days and counting. (It didn\u2019t help that one specific person whose 15 minutes of notoriety have expired may be trying to leverage a little extra time by injecting herself into the story.)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s stupid. It\u2019s illogical. It\u2019s cuckoo for mutherf\u2014king Cocoa Puffs. And while it may be good for aggregator engagement, it\u2019s very bad for brain cells \u2014 and it reveals the absence of them in those who actually believe there\u2019s a link between the two things.<\/p>\n
Also (and since this one has caught some traction, too), NBC didn\u2019t \u201cfire\u201d Chris. He\u2019ll still co-host PFT Live. He\u2019ll still do his podcast, Chris Simms Unbuttoned. He\u2019s still part of the NBC Saturday college football studio show.<\/p>\n
And, no, I\u2019m not the next to be \u201cfired.\u201d I own PFT. And while there\u2019s always a chance NBC will decide on the expiration of the current contract or a future one to go in a different direction, PFT isn\u2019t going away until I sell it, drop dead, or decide I\u2019ve had enough.<\/p>\n
The fact that I had to set the record straight on something so damn idiotic makes the third option a lot more attractive than it ordinarily would be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anyone in the media who says \u201cI ignore social media\u201d is either lying or dumb. It\u2019s important to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-617009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}