Peter King Is Retiring*

One of the absolute best to ever do it won't be doing it anymore as Peter King has announced his retirement in a final Football Morning In America column. There's an asterisk involved but it certainly seems like those long, meandering, unique deep-dives into the NFL that have become part of the routine for decades will no longer be there to help everyone ease into the week.

I’m retiring*. I use an asterisk because I truly don’t know what the future holds for me. I probably will work at something, but as I write this I have no idea what it will be. Maybe it will be something in the media world, but just not Football Morning in America (nee Monday Morning Quarterback).

King, who has been doing the column for 27 years and worked as a sportswriter for 44, cites four reasons for his decision at age 66 and they all make sense but it is still an abject bummer. One of them suggests that he could only do his column one way and that cutting it down from an average of 10,500 words to a mere 6,000 last season proved difficult. He also mentions spending more time with family and searching for a deeper meaning and all that stuff but the fact that he struggled to not give readers everything makes all the sense in the world.

He also graciously shouts out the next generation of football writers and offers some enthusiasm for the future among the concerns. It really is a nice way to say goodbye, or at least say goodbye for now.

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. 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.

While this is hopefully true there won't ever be another King. He was earnest and himself and not afraid to turn in anything and everything he wanted to say and let the chips fall where they may. His hybrid style of collecting as much information as possible and using it in concert with his own observations has been copied over and over again.

We'll close with a toast to the existence of coffee and an unrelated baseball thought in the direction of an icon. Hell of a run.