In most walks of life, it’s fun and sometimes easy to recognize situations that make us better people. Furthermore, many professional situations have helped us grow and perform better at work. NFL Network insider Ian Rapoport knows all about it and then some.
Rapoport joined the Awful Announcing podcast recently and discussed his career and how he’s become one of the most preeminent sports insiders in the industry. Rapoport also shared a fascinating story about an incident that made him unable to take on a report. Among the other discussion topics came a retelling of a situation that Rapoport says made him a better reporter.
Host Brandon Contes asked Rapoport what “swing and miss” from his reporting was his most prominent, and the NFL insider quickly had a response. “I feel like there’s only one,” he said.
“It was one that was probably the most important thing to happen to me in reporting. And I don’t even wanna say it was a swing and a miss because swing and a miss sort of means I tried for something and didn’t get it. This one, it was right, and then it was wrong. But it was instructive,” he said before revealing the story: The ill-fated Antonio Brown trade to the Buffalo Bills.
“That was the year he showed up in the fur coat in the playoff game; it was clear he was getting traded somewhere. I got the scoop. I was pretty sure the deal was happening, and I knew the terms. You know, I got it from a really, really good source. I called some people, but my source was rock-solid. So I report, ‘Antonio Brown is close to a deal with the Bills.'”
Rapoport said he went on TV, “did a victory lap,” and woke to text messages at 5 a.m. He mentioned his colleague Mike Garafolo texted him, “What did you do?”
“Sh*t. What could possibly have happened?” Rapoport said, recalling what happened and saying the deal fell through. “That sucked,” Rapoport said. He went through print and radio interviews but said that the best thing to happen was not having enough information.
“But I didn’t have it from all sides, and what that forced me to do is every time I report anything now? Gotta get it from all sides,” he said. “I’ve lost plenty because I didn’t have it good enough. So that sort of embarrassment, whatever you would say, basically changed the way I reported for the rest of my career.”
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About Chris Novak
Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022