From a Chuck Klosterman column in Esquire, on former athletes-turned-broadcasters:
If you discount the print-media buffoons (Jay Mariotti, Skip Bayless, et al.) who go on TV with the express intent of destroying whatever credibility the newspaper industry once had, Salisbury is the least cogent, most wrongheaded voice in the sports media. He's an atrocity. Yet this broadcast lunacy has saved his gridiron legacy. Salisbury's career-passer rating was a dismal 55.1 and he never had one decent season, but in retrospect that production looks amazing. It seems impossible, but it's true: Sean Salisbury was better as a player. Which is just about the craziest sentence I've ever written.And this was written before Salisbury's recent cell-phone-picture-of-his-junk scandal.
Klosterman's new book, by the way, is hilarious, especially the old piece about Mexican teenagers in LA who love Morissey. I was laughing so hard reading it the other night that I woke up Becca in the middle of the night.
Posted by Stephen Silver at January 19, 2007 03:46 PM