Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times. Mark Leibovich

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       3.

       NUGGETS

      No less of a genius than Bill Belichick appeared to be lost. I watched him and ESPN’s Trey Wingo passing each other twice down the same hallway. They then pivoted and changed directions and passed each other again. Belichick was wearing ­flip-­flops, cargo shorts, and a trademark gray hoodie with big sweat blotches on the back. He also wore his trademark “I hate this fucking league” scowl, a few notches more grim than his usual default scowl.

      This aloofness goes well beyond Belichick’s ­well-­established commitment to “ignoring the noise.” “Ignore the noise” is one of the many anodyne phrases that get elevated to branded merchandise by the Patriots because it happened to emanate from the tongues of Mr. Kraft or Coach Fucking Genius (“one of the most active organizations in sports as far as trademarking phrases goes,” ESPN reported. When 345 Park is involved, Belichick has been known to ratchet his contempt to Hall of Fame levels. A few minutes after the Patriots defeated the Seahawks in Super Bowl 49, an NFL flunky assigned to the Patriots coach mentioned a few “league things,” like interviews and posing for photos, that were expected of the winning coach. “Fuck the league,” Belichick said at this moment of pinnacle triumph. They should trademark that, too, if they haven’t already.

      The closer one works to a football field, the less use one would have for a league meeting. Conversely, these are ­crunch-­time events for the parasites, support staff, and media eavesdroppers who can get a great deal done here. In the lobby I encountered the ­perma-­tanned Drew ­Rosenhaus, who pimps himself as “the NFL’s Most Ruthless Agent.” Rosenhaus stood a few feet away from the NFL’s leading media busybody, ESPN’s Schefter.

      These league powwows are like Adam’s bar mitzvah. He knows everyone here. He waves to passing GMs, coaches, and agents in the lobby, holds a phone to his left ear and checks a text on another in his right hand. This is the population that makes up the “per sources” that Schefter cites whenever he tweets out a nugget to his seven million followers. Schefter is the prototype of a sports media subspecies that has gained cachet: the NFL Insider.

      “Dannon goes with Cowboys QB Dak Prescott after dropping Cam Newton, per source,” Schefter tweeted after the Panthers’ quarterback went off on a sexist riff at a press conference, costing him endorsements. Schefter did not specify whether his scoop came per football or yogurt sources. But take it to the bank (an insider catchphrase) the man has sources; or even more than sources, he has “relationships,” as Schefter described them to me. “There are some that are friends,” he said. Schefter mentioned that a head coach had invited him to his son’s wedding last summer. “My friends in the sport, they call me for advice, ask what I think,” Schefter told me.

      But, I asked, isn’t the notion of “friend” a bit fraught in the journalism business? Maybe, but the nugget racket is its own distinct subset. The Schefters of the space do not play for the Pulitzer Prizes (the ­eight-­part series and textured storytelling). He was named “Most Influential Tweeter in New York” by New York magazine is more like it.

      Insiders have their own reward system and play by their own rules. I asked Schefter what would happen if he had to report a critical item about one of his “friends” in the business. His tone became slightly defensive. “Hold on,” Schefter said. “How often am I writing a critical thing? That’s not what I do. My job is trafficking ­information—­who’s hired, fired, traded, extended.”

      Nuggets!

      Nuggets aren’t “news” necessarily, in the same way that Chicken McNuggets aren’t really food. But they have become pleasing, even addictive, components of the fan diet nonetheless. When I was growing up, NFL ­transactions—­like those from the other major ­leagues—­were mostly rendered in agate type in the back of the sports pages. That’s where one would learn, for instance, that the NFL fined Steelers safety Mike Mitchell $48,620 for his late hit on Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith, or that the Redskins were signing kicker Nick Rose or that former 49ers linebacker NaVorro Bowman had struck a ­one-­year deal with the Raiders. These items were packaged as the afterthoughts they were. Even among ­hard-­core fans, the privilege of learning that the Colts had placed running back Robert Turbin (elbow) on injured reserve could wait until the morning. These followers did not have fantasy moves ­pending—­because fantasy football did not exist, and neither did the Internet and neither did Adam Schefter in his multiplatform embodiment.

      There is no great Big Bang theory to explain how yesterday’s agate type became the nugget cosmos that Schefty rules. Or, if there is, he isn’t pondering cosmic questions like that. I once asked Schefter whether it bothered him that the ­half-­life of his art ­form—­the ­nugget—­lasted roughly as long as a single dose of Ritalin. “Everything’s fleeting,” Schefter said, shrugging. He checked his phone as if it were an involuntary brain function, like breathing.

      Schefter would be loath to waste a second before discharging some morsel of “breaking news,” just as his customers would be loath to learn of a transaction one second later than they had to. With his ­always-­refilling hoard of data snacks, Adam feeds a dynamic market of incremental news in which he is also the chief broker and disseminator.

      Schefter is coiffed, suited, and perpetually made up. He cultivates a harried bearing, as if carrying the weight of each follower’s information needs. Increasingly, he is feeding their addiction to fantasy leagues. “There’s been a shift over time,” said Schefter, who joined ESPN in 2009 after five years at the NFL Network and more than fifteen years covering the Broncos for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News. “I am rarely asked how a team is going to do, and I am regularly asked whether I should start this player or that player, draft this player, who’s a sleeper, who’s a breakout guy.” Schefter is, to paraphrase Hair Club for Men president Sy Sperling, not only the Nugget Club for Men president but also a client. He is a devout fantasy owner in his own right. His team is called “Per Sources.”

      Schefter’s full-on life commitment to the hunt for nuggets is his brand animator. He enjoys the fact of his ­one-­dimensional ­existence—­no hobbies, no time for anything besides job, family, and venti soy chai lattes. He sleeps five fitful hours a night (“in bursts, never continuously”) and tries to get a date night in with his wife on weekends. He works out ­Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and never without his phone. A driver takes him the two-to-­three-­hour distance between ­ESPN’s Bristol, Connecticut, headquarters and his home on Long Island, which allows Schefter to work en route or maybe to steal an extra burst of ­shut-­eye. “I regret to say I am not the most ­well-­rounded individual,” he told me. He barely writes anymore beyond firing СКАЧАТЬ