Peter King, fixture on NFL scene with Sports Illustrated and NBC, announces retirement

Source: Cleveland

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Longtime sportswriter Peter King, who rose to fame covering the NFL with Sports Illustrated and NBC Sports, announced early Monday that he is retiring.

Mostly retiring, that is. In his announcement posted in his weekly column, Football Morning in America, King left the door open to future projects. It just won't be the weekly grind of the NFL.

"I'm retiring*. I use an asterisk because I truly don't know what the future holds for me," King writes. "I probably will work at something, but as I write this I have no idea what it will be."

While King grew up in Connecticut, he earned his degree in journalism at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. He worked at the Cincinnati Enquirer in the early 1980s and for Newsday before beginning a long run with Sports Illustrated.

King soon became a well-known fixture on NFL sidelines and his "Monday Morning Quarterback" column while with SI became must reading for fans who enjoyed his long, weekly dives (usually 10,000 words) into the minutiae of the game.

He began making appearances on NBC's "Football Night America" in 2006 and left Sports Illustrated in 2018 to work full-time for NBC Sports.

But King says in his column that he was struggling to maintain interest in reporting on the little details of the NFL and he considered retiring a year ago.

"I had to force myself to be interested in things other than training camps and the games, and that's no way to do this job," he writes. "But I still liked doing the work so much that I decided to come back for the year, pretty sure it would be my last."

King writes that the demands of his job was difficult on his wife Ann, and his two daughters, Laura and Mary Beth. He also cites his father and two brothers all dying by the age of 64 (King is 66).

So for now, he says he's looking forward to the opportunity to get bored before looking for new work. He also says he's ready to hand over the job of covering the NFL to younger journalists.

"That's what I'll miss. "Heisman." "Two Jet Chip Wasp." "Corn Dog." "Tom and Jerry." The brains of football, the choreography of football, beating the brawn of football," he writes. "I'll miss bringing that to you, and I'll miss your appreciation for it. But you'll find it. The next generation will bring it to you. Jourdan Rodrigue, Ben Solak, Kalyn Kahler. You'll see. The world gets better, as will what you read about football. You're in great hands."