King embraces his new role with NBC
After covering football at Sports Illustrated for 29 years, announced in May that he was leaving the venerated magazine to work full-time for NBC.
His final “Monday Morning Quarterback” column appeared on May 21, and because Sports Illustrated still uses the MMQB label for much of its NFL content, when King’s NBC column debuts on Monday it will carry the name “Football Morning in America.”
The column will feature some small additions and minor tweaks but will largely feel familiar to longtime readers, with King delving deep into the topics and characters that populate the nation’s mostwatched sport. Still, King’s move does provide a milemarker of sorts, further evidence of a rapidly-shifting landscape — certainly for his own distinguished career but also for the sport of football and for sports media.
King, 61, discussed these topics and others with the Washington Post in advance of his NBC debut. This interview has been lightly edited for length.
“I think a lot of the column will be similar to what I’ve done, particularly in the last three to five years. But I am going to add some new elements. There’s one thing that I’ve always really wanted to do. In my first column, it’s going to be with
the former coach of the Giants. Basically, it’s going to be called ‘What I’ve Learned.’ In essence, this is going to be a section of the column that is going to be basically somebody in or near to football and a lesson that they’ve learned.
“There’s two or three people on every team who have got some real wisdom to share, some stories to tell about the things they’ve learned.”
and I did a week in the life of a quarterback, and it was tremendously fun and rewarding and so incredibly educational. And I think I finished working on it a few days after that week, and I wrote about 15,000 words. I think I finished writing on a Wednesday night, and I took a deep breath and then all I could think of was, ‘OK, now I’ve got to write my mailbag column and now I’ve got to think of what I’m going to do on Sunday and I have this other project I’m working on.’
“The grind of it and the fact that the monster has to be fed all the time — that is really what is going to be better for me. Been there, done that, don’t want to do it anymore.”