It’s July 1. A slow point on the NFL calendar, but a momentous day in these parts.
Four years ago today, we hitched the PFT wagon to NBC.
I didn’t want to do it. Rick Cordella, now the NBC Sports Group Senior Vice President and General Manager, Digital, can attest to that. I tried to scare him away, making Costanza-style demands and protestations about journalistic integrity despite, as Jerry (sort of) told George, I’m not a journalist, and I have no integrity.
But it eventually happened (the whole story is too long to tell here, also likely too boring). And it has been the best move we ever made.
Sure, we get accused from time to time of being kindler and gentler than we used to be. And then, when we try to show that we have the same edge we displayed pre-NBC, we get accused of being jerks, or worse.
It’s a balance we’ll continue to try to strike, one day at a time, dozens of posts and tweets per day. Will we periodically, through all the content and stories and reports and takes, give a blogger or tweeter or whatever something to point to and say, “See, these guys are sellouts” or “See, these guys are jerks, or worse”? Sure.
But the greater goal is to enhance the diversion that comes from following the NFL, with information and analysis and mildly-amusing-at-times turns of phrase or YouTube clips or whatever else will make this something other than the unflavored gelatin recitation of the facts you can find in plenty of other places.
Thanks to everyone at NBC who helps up do what we do, including (and I’m guaranteed to piss someone off by omitting them but what the hell I’ll give it a try anyway) Mark Lazarus, Sam Flood, Fred Gaudelli, Rick Cordella, Kevin Monaghan, Matt Casey, Brett Goodman, Dan Steir, Bruce Cornblatt, Joe Gesue, Ron Vaccaro, Ron Wechsler, Michael Kane, Eric Black, Kristen Coleman, the entire crew that puts together PFT Live, the entire crew that puts together Pro Football Talk on NBCSN, the folks who have the thankless job of clearing the thousands of comments our posts generate, all the great on-air talent who has treated us like family from day one, including Dan Patrick, Al Michaels, Bob Costas, Cris Collinsworth, Tony Dungy, Rodney Harrison, Hines Ward, Peter King, Doug Flutie, and Michele Tafoya, Pro Football Talk on NBCSN co-host Erik Kuselias, analysts Ross Tucker, Shaun King, Pete Najarian, and Anthony Becht, fill-in hosts Carolyn Manno and Russ Thaler, and the ever-growing crew of folks who crank out the content here every day of the year, with no days off: Michael David Smith, Darin Gantt, Josh Alper, Curtis Crabtree, and Mike Wilkening.
And special thanks to Dick Ebersol, who believed in what we do and constantly went out of his way to help promote it.
That’s a lot of names. Proving that, indeed, we’ve come a long way from a solitary man in a messy apartment that may or may not contain a chicken.
Thanks for joining us on the ride, and please stick around. We’re constantly trying to make it better, and we hope that we’ll find ways to do it in the coming years.