Further Evidence in Case You Didn't Believe Jay Mariotti Was the Lying, Hypocritical, Deceptive Scum of the Earth

I try to be fair here. You may not believe that, but I do try. I try not to make personal, mean attacks on those who I cover here on the blog. I want the focus to be on the work they produce and how terrible it can be. It's easy to focus on the work with some writers and harder to do others. Then there are sportswriters like Jay Mariotti. I just don't think he's a very good guy. I think he's a liar, he's deceptive and he's willing to bash "huge conglomerates" for taking over the sports media, all while trying to get a job with a huge conglomerate. He's consistent only in how inconsistent he is. I remember how he wrote an article about five years ago on how conference tournaments are worthless and then revised the entire column after the Big East Tournament had several thrilling games. Literally revised everything about the column, including whether the conference tournaments were a waste of time. Fortunately I had caught the post he had written when he was bashing the tournaments prior to not bashing them and posted it here.

Well now, after proudly going "indie" at Sports Talk Florida, Jay has gone back to the print media that he once declared was dying a bitter, sad death. Much like his previous employers have done when Jay lays them to waste by slipping out the backdoor in the middle of the night, Sports Talk Florida has removed every trace of Jay, except for his slimy picture. It's usually how it goes with Jay. It's a process:

1. Jay is hired by a sports company/newspaper after leaving his previous position with angry feelings all around.

2. Jay immediately begins bashing the old company/newspaper and talks about how his new company/newspaper is the direction ALL sports media is going, so his other company/newspaper will be gone soon.

3. Jay writes trolling articles and most people who read hate him.

4. Eventually people at Jay's employer start hating him, because he's generally not a likeable person.

5. Jay slips out the door due to the angry feelings he and his new employer feel towards each other and eventually finds a desperate sports conglomerate to hire him in order to bring in ratings.

Then the process starts over again. Well, Jay Mariotti has found a new sucker for an employer. Jay's new employer is a daily newspaper, "The San Francisco Examiner," the same kind of daily newspaper he declared was dead when he left the "Chicago Sun-Times" for AOL. I figured this would be a fun time to follow-up on the introduction he wrote upon joining Sports Talk Florida and see what a hypocrite Jay is. Due to Sports Talk Florida scrubbing all of Jay's columns, I will have to cover what he wrote based on what I wrote on this here ol' blog. It's always funny how Jay hates on those newspapers and big conglomerates that he eventually goes running back to.

I'll also cover a little bit of what I wrote at the time about Jay in italics. Here was part of the introduction:

See, Jay is all "indie sportswriting" now. Corporations suck and big companies just suck the life out of you. This is rich coming from a guy who made a ton of money working for big sports media corporations and this money he made is how he can afford to "go indie" with his sportswriting. Regardless, after making a career on television at ESPN, writing at the "Chicago Sun-Times," and recently pitching his columns to sites like Fox Sports, Jay completely fails to see the contradiction in touting his new indie direction. Basically, he got rejected by the big boys, so now he feels he is too cool and "indie" for them. Jay wants to be The Man, not work for The Man. No really, Jay says something like this in this not-so-brief introduction.

I’m excited to launch a multimedia production that I believe will be the next digital prototype for sports commentators and columnists.

It was not. It was done after less than two years. It became the next prototype for why hiring Jay Mariotti is always a bad idea. Jay is 50% less talented than he believes himself to be. He sees himself as the white knight of sports journalism, while many others see him as an example of how print and sports journalism has handed it's soul over to tabloid and hot take journalism.

At a time when corporate interests have swallowed much of sports journalism and left too much cooperative residue between leagues and mammoth media companies,

Now Jay is working for a free newspaper that is independently owned! While Jay may say he's going even more "indie," he's now not only working in print media again, but is working in FREE print media. I'm sure he believes this to be a massive step-up...at least until the "Examiner" comes to their senses and has a falling out with Jay.

In partnership with Genesis Communications, my plan has come to life. I’ve signed a multi-year deal to provide news and commentary about anyone and anything in sports, media, culture, the world.

"Multi-year" being defined as "1.5 years." After that, Jay wears out his welcome. I wonder if Sports Talk Florida signed Jay to a multi-year deal and then got out of it or Jay got out of the deal with Sports Talk Florida once a better job in an industry he once declared is dead opened up?

In my days away, sports has taken complex and unprecedented turns, and the need for robust, serious commentary and investigative reporting is stronger than ever.

Which is probably why Jay Mariotti hasn't been an active part of sports commentary for the past 3-4 years. There was a need for serious commentary, which is why Jay didn't have a real job in the industry like he used to. Trolling readers and baiting managers into trying to beat him up is Jay's idea of serious journalism. Also, Jay has never done any investigative reporting, unless you want to count investigating how far up his own ass he can put his head.

Sports is a multi-billion-dollar-business — should we be saying multi-trillion now? — and it should be covered as such by commentators who are editorially and financially detached from the mechanism.

That is, until a newspaper offers Jay a job and he has to take it because Sports Talk Florida doesn't want him anymore.

Remember that Jay said in 2009 the future is "sadly not in newspapers." Apparently we are no longer in the future, because Jay has gone back to a daily newspaper for employment. Isn't it weird how Jay bashes industries that he's simply jealous he's no longer a part of? It's almost like a trend with him. He bashes newspapers upon leaving the "Sun-Times" for AOL, bashes huge conglomerates after AOL and ESPN get rid of him for his legal issues and Sports Talk Florida hires him (all while trying to get a permanent job with Fox and ESPN and doing a free lance assignment for ESPN...of course), and now I'm sure he'll bash Sports Talk Florida in some way.

For anyone questioning this vision and my commitment to digital evolution, rewind to 2008, when the Chicago Sun-Times (a newspaper in the Midwest) broke a promise to improve its archaic Web site during our coverage of the Beijing Olympics. I politely resigned after the Games, left $1 million of guaranteed money behind,

This was when Jay Mariotti first declared newspapers to be dead. If you believe he resigned over a web site design then I have oceanfront property in the Midwest I would like to sell you. Look at the "Examiner's" web site. They have auto-play videos and everything! Maybe Jay is just a stickler for good web page design!

I should note I’ve had meetings with ESPN and Fox about joining their operations, and candidly,

They had no interest in hiring you?

I think they’re too corporate, while they have their own opinions of me.

"Too corporate" being defined as "they didn't want to hire me" due to the opinion they had of Jay.

Jay really lives in his own world, doesn't he? He truly believes those things he writes. He convinces himself that he doesn't want to work for ESPN and Fox, mostly because they don't want him to work with him.

I was stunned to hear ESPN’s Michael Wilbon angrily criticize Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, as “gutless” after the league didn’t punish Philadelphia receiver Riley Cooper for his racist remark.

That is a rarity, people.

Jay can't simply leave a previous job. In fact, I'm sure in his introductory column at the "Examiner" he will bash his previous employer. He's so slimy.

Having been painted by previous bosses into conflict-of-interest-driven editorial corners, I’ve opted at this point to be the independent who controls content within a franchise. The goal is to expand with more writers and voices while growing the radio program for Genesis nationally and across Florida.

Then Jay opted to jump right back into the print media that he once declared was dead.

I’m not doing this to get wealthy; 

Because that's what the meetings with ESPN and Fox were for, to see if they would hire him so he could get wealthy. Fortunately, the "Examiner" came along and probably gave Jay a nice monthly paycheck, so he's in the business of getting wealthy again. Jay's agenda and perspective depends entirely on which media outlet is currently rejecting him or accepting him.  

You’re seeing “franchise” sites pop up, such as Bill Simmons and “Grantland” at ESPN and Peter King’s “MMQB” at Sports Illustrated. Those are cool sites oozing of quality, but this will be more cutting-edge.

By "cutting-edge" Jay means "not having 1/100 of the success those sites had and will fail after less than two years." There was nothing "cutting edge" about Jay's site on Sports Talk Florida, so he had to go back to the "cutting edge" of sports journalism, which he suddenly believes to be print media.

I’m not in this business to publicize sports or masturbate to my own prose.

Yes, because Jay is now in a position as sports director to force others to masturbate to his prose and directly make others' live miserable by reminding them of how talentless they are compared to him. It's a dream job for him.

Time to work. With a portable studio — how I love 2013 — we’ll be doing the radio show from L.A., Florida, the Super Bowl, a Mexican bullfighting ring, anywhere and everywhere.

And now, Jay will write about how portable studios are the worst thing ever to happen to sports. That is until he gets an opportunity to do a radio show in a portable studio after the "Examiner" tires of him.

Then in his original first post on Sports Talk Florida, Jay goes on to call the woman who accused him of striking her as a liar who was in it for the publicity and claims he only settled so his family wouldn't have to be dragged through a court case. A court case he TOTALLY would have won, but a court case where his name would have been slandered by a system that was completely against him as a white, male who earns six figures per year. We all know rich white men are the real silent victims in the criminal justice system.

He didn't even make sense at the time when explaining his reasons for settling:

I took the high road, didn’t scream publicly about dirty tactics in the case, accepted the no-contest route and wrote the book in September 2011 not to make money but so all of this could be on public record.

And any testimony at the trial would also have been a part of the public record.

Wrote Rieder: “Life is packed with nuances and subtleties and shades of gray. But the news media are often uncomfortable in such murky terrain. They prefer straightforward narratives, with good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. Those tales are much easier for readers and viewers to relate to.”

This from a sportswriter who made a living off passing judgment on others. Remember the time he jumped all over Michael Phelps for smoking pot?

Going forward, I suppose I could leave behind the daily sports grind, write more books and dabble in other subject material. But why?

So that you don't bother anyone with your existence?
 
Yes, I’ve had meetings with a few media companies about what I might do next. A Fox executive asked if I would be changing my column approach.

“Nope,” I said. “Same guy, same column.”

And of course the "Examiner" didn't take the hint that the "same guy" who was claiming to have a different perspective lasted less than two years at his previous job. I guess they didn't care, but it's on them when this whole "hiring Jay Mariotti" thing blows up in their face like it is bound to do.

I’m confident about this site because I’ve been there when so many haven’t — 14 Olympic Games, 24 Super Bowls and a wealth of World Series, NBA Finals, Final Fours, college football championship games, golf and tennis majors, title fights, etc. I’ve written my 6,500-plus columns, been on national TV a couple of thousand times, done my radio programs for years.

Jay was so confident that he couldn't make it work. What is it about him that makes sports papers/sites continue to hire him? I don't get it. Does he throw his resume in their face and it's so overwhelming that they forget he is a talentless hack who wears out his welcome at nearly every single place he has worked over that last decade?

The Mariotti Show is a site firmly planted in 2013 yet detached from the government-like climates of corporate media.

The "Examiner" sports page will be firmly planted in 2015 when Jay suddenly thinks print media and newspapers still have a chance to survive, yet detached from pre-2009 when Jay thought the newspaper industry was dying and didn't mind telling anyone who would listen that his job at AOL was better. Then Jay decided his job at Sports Talk Florida, away from the AOL and ESPN conglomerate, was better. And now his job for the "Examiner" is better. Everything is better until it's not anymore.

I can tell the truth about any subject I want, anytime I want, and no one can summarily spike content because your boss is friendly with a commissioner or owner, your company is in business with a league or team, your newspaper has a comped suite at the ballpark or your network has a rights deal through 2082 with a major college conference.

It seems your have welcomed your self back into the world that you were so eager to leave...again. I can't wait for Jay to bash print media again after he has a falling out with the "Examiner" and finds a new direction (i.e. someone willing to hire him) for sports media in the future.