What Was He Thinking?

I was on my way to drop my daughter off at her friends house and listening to Sirius NFL Radio, Press Coverage when I heard something I didn't expect. It was the tone in which hosts Dan Leberfeld and Zig Fracassi were talking to their guest Nick Athan.

The thing that caught my attention was that Athan, an editor at Warpaint Illustrated, was defending the inane post of one Internet blogger turned semi-pro journalist who called Athan out on his website.

Yes, there they were talked about Athan and the classless move of one Mike Florio and Jason Whitlock who had publicly trashed Athan's credibility with information which was wrong.

Florio is no stranger to controversy. Many a journalist had called him little more than a simple hack. But his site has become so popular that Florio parlayed it into a legitimate gig on regular sports media outlets.

Whitlock, who has a tendency to use race in his columns, went off on Athan, citing information he gave to the NFL Network which was "wrong" as Whitlock put it. To be fair to Athan, who confirmed to me that he did email the NFL Network, but that he said the Shanahan deal is set email wasn't the only one he sent to the NFL Network. He followed it up 5 minutes later to clarify his position that he believed it was a done deal.

The interesting part of Athan's relationship with NFLN was that he had earlier told them that Scott Pioli would become the GM of the Chiefs. They didn't believe it, Adam schefter went on Boston Radio and ridiculed Warpaint. Less than a week later Pioli was standing at a press table talking about he and Chiefs owner Clark Hunt would turn the team around.

This is not to defend Athan, who was first with the Pioli news, and by his own admission erroneous in the Shanahan hire. It's to address the move by Florio and Whitlock... influenced by the NFLN move.

We've coped the Florio post in it's entirety because internet sites have a tendency to get changed without admission of editing.

LINK

I’ve known Nick Athan of Warpaint Illustrated for several years, and I’ve never regarded him as a questionable source of Chiefs news.

But that might be a result of the fact that I don’t pay much attention to the Chiefs.

With Athan’s report that Chiefs owner Clark Hunt recently said that the team has complied with the Rooney Rule when in fact Hunt never has said any such thing, we’ve now got serious concerns.

Our concerns became even more pointed upon receiving moments ago the following IM from Jason Whitlock: “LEAVE NICK ATHAN ALONE. . . total assclown. ASSCLOWN.”

(You know, Whitlock’s career would really take off if he’d quit being so damned wishy-washy about his opinions.)

“[F]eel free to quote me by name,” Whitlock said, “belittling you for even responding to that assclown’s e-mail. [H]e’s the guy who sen NFL [N]etwork an e-mail saying the [C]hiefs’ deal for [S]hanahan was DONE and that [S]chefter was wrong. [A]than is an assclown.”

Whitlock’s opinions regarding Athan’s are Whitlock’s alone, primarily since I’ve never been able to identify a consensus definition of the term “assclown.”

That said, Whitlock has never steered me wrong in the past, so I probably will be heeding his advice.

I as floored that:
1) Whitlock would call Athan names... other than because Athan scooped Whitlock many times in Kansas City

and
2) Florio would actually post something which was obviously sent as a personal message.

I was amazed, astounded and quite rankly a little disappointed in both Florio and Whitlock. I guess I shouldn't have been. Reading the comments on the post you can see people taking both sides.

As a new media journalist, I cannot do what Florio did. Nor would I sound off like Whitlock, who appears to be fll of a lot of hate lately. I'd be fired at my two professional gigs. It's surprising there are no repurcussions for either journalist