Nobody is perfect, but retiring NFL columnist Peter King still has major regrets over his initial Deflatgate reporting.
His Jan. 23, 2015 column backed up a report from ESPN’s Chris Mortenson after a dominant Patriots victory over the Colts in which New England’s footballs were found to be under-inflated — until it didn’t.
“I confirmed the ESPN story about the deflated footballs after Deflategate first hit the scene,” King told CBS Sports Radio’s “Maggie & Perloff” on Tuesday. “It was a Monday night, and I called two people who I was sure would know exactly what happened. And they both confirmed the ESPN story, and so I wrote it, talked about it, and it turns out I was wrong.”
That August, King apologized in his column, stating that the source “believed the story was accurate when, obviously, it clearly was not.”
“It’s my error. I need to be better than that,” King said. “Readers, and the Patriots, deserve better than that.”
Over nine years later, the legendary football columnist is still haunted by the reporting that Patriots owner Robert Kraft publicly shamed later that year.
“That brought me a lot of shame,” King said. “It doesn’t matter who I talked to. It doesn’t matter who told me anything. It’s my rear end on the line when I say something, when I confirm a story. And I was wrong. And that is something that will haunt me, really. It bothers me, literally bothers me to this day.”
King reportedly wrote a resignation letter to his Sports Illustrated bosses at the time, though it was unaccepted.
He eventually moved to NBC, writing his Monday column under the “Football Morning in America” heading before announcing his upcoming retirement this week, ending a 44-year career covering the NFL.
“Who’s complaining? Not me. I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth,” King wrote this week. “To be a long-termer in an increasingly short-term business, to write this column for 27 years and to be a sportswriter for 44, well, that’s something I’ll always be grateful for. Truly, I’ve loved it all.
