Many of you now Jay Glazer as a Fox Sports journalist and TV personality. That's certainly where I know him from. He's the guy that yells a lot to accentuate his point (think Jamie Ducks but kind of smart). He is one of their NFL insiders and is well-liked by many of his readers and viewers. When he's not covering the NFL, NFL teams and NFL players he's working with Randy Couture (or more accurately, Couture's people at one of Couture's many gyms) providing mixed martial arts (MMA) training to football players.
Before I go into how that is probably a conflict of interest, let me say that I think MMA training is a fantastic way for players to keep in shape and fine-tune their craft in the offseason. The training for takedowns and takedown defense are probably the most valuable, some of these guys are absolute masters at utilizing their body to make other people feel pain. With an MMA background a player will likely have better tackling form, a player has a better feel for how his entire body can be used as different forms of leverage. In short, for any physical contact or impact, it's a handy thing to know.
But back to this being a conflict of interest. There are those who think that Glazer becoming friends with these players, him witnessing these players working out, they believe that conflicts with his job covering the very same players. In the past, Glazer has worked with Matt Leinart, Keith RIvers, Brian Cushing and others, including our very own Patrick Willis. Willis thought the training was invaluable. But what of Glazer's conflict of interest? What if he saw something he wasn't supposed to see, that he was allowed to see in the capacity of being a trainer and not a journalist. Can he really be taken seriously at this point? And say he did capitalize on such a thing, it's a conflict of interest the other way. It wouldn't be fair to any of the people he trains.
This, journalistically, is a joke. An embarrassing, pathetic, worst-of-its-kind joke.
The quote is taken from Jeff Pearlman and the article here. Personally, I don't think it's as big a deal as it's made in said post, but I do think Glazer is a guy whose journalistic integrity has to be questioned. I suppose that's a noble thing these days though "journalistic integrity" may not exist the way it is supposed to, but either way I hadn't considered this until the article above mentioned it. I knew Glazer trained them, and does a good job for what they pay him, but I'd never made the connection. The article goes on to ask...:
So what if Glazer hears Leinart calling a hooker? What if he sees Cushing (funny example) poppin ‘roids? What if he doesn’t think Grant is an especially hard worker? Does he sleep on the information, or does he ruin his ties with the players by reporting it? The answer is obvious: He sleeps on it.
So what are your thoughts on the matter? Has Glazer crossed the line of journalistic integrity? I certainly have more thoughts on the matter that I can air out but let's get the discussion going with this.