It’s really sad to see what has happened to Mike Florio.
I’m usually pretty sarcastic on here, but this column is dead serious for a change.
When Mike Florio started out, he was one of my idols: a guy who pumped out content so frequently, with just the right amount of snark and self-deprecation, that you couldn’t help but love him. Through a lot of hard work and humility, he built ProFootballTalk into a site that became “the place” to get football news before social media.
Florio was a lawyer. I assume he was making really good money like most lawyers. But he did so good at football reporting that he was able to quit his day job and report on football full time.
Along the way, he built a partnership with NBC and expanded into television.
He was the American Dream.
But somewhere along the way, so slowly that it was almost imperceptible, things changed.
For the worse.
Florio’s a Vikings fan. So of course, he took some jabs at the Packers and cast his team in a positive light.
Even as a rival fan, that was part of his appeal, part of his charm. He was human. He was fun.
Or at least he used to be.
Gone are the days where he could poke fun at himself, be lighthearted with rival fans, and show appreciation for success.
Now, his platform is full-on attacking anyone with a differing viewpoint. It’s no long insightful football debate, it’s not even good-natured ribbing or frat-boy jocking, it’s downright nasty and insulting.
Worse yet, it’s moved beyond football. Florio is consistently whining about politics, starting feuds with players on the dumbest non-football topics imaginable, and turning every football topic he can into a hot button issue seemingly aimed at riling people up into a frothing Fox News vs CNN style shouting match.
It’s no longer about football. It’s just about attention.
It’s sad to see what he and his site have become.
Florio was one of the good ones.
No, he was the good one.
He was the best. He built the site that was my number one go-to location for football news.
Now… deep sigh… now he’s just another loud-mouth chuckleface shouting ridiculous garbage to get attention.
The world already (unfortunately) has Skip Bayless and Colin Cowherd to scream idiocy and get clicks from the rubes. There’s more than enough of that nonsense.
The world also has hundreds of former players spouting stupidity that seems hyper-focused on convincing everyone that they have no idea how football works.
There’s enough stupid arguments and clickbait to saturate the market ten times over.
There’s precious few insightful analysts left any more.
And now there’s one fewer.
R.I.P. ProFootballTalk.
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