Fox Sports NFL insider Jay Glazer had a big series of NFL scoops last week, including star pass rusher Maxx Crosby’s dispute with the Raiders, further details of DK Metcalf’s security complaint against a Lions fan heckler, and the news that CBS analyst Matt Ryan was in talks for a front office role with his former team, the Falcons.
Front Office Sports talked to Glazer about how he goes about breaking news, doing MMA training, and his advice to young reporters.
FOS: You had a big week last week. It’s kind of wild how this stuff comes and goes in streaks, right?
Jay Glazer: My job every week is to come on Fox NFL Sunday and give you something no one knows. The business has changed. Now, you break news during the week and within seconds everyone gets it.
For Fox NFL Sunday and Fox NFL Kickoff [the pre-pregame show], I make sure that every single week I have something that nobody knew. I’ve always done it the whole year, every year, but I think this past week was a glaring one where I came to the show with a couple of things.
It’s definitely harder to come by now. There’s so many more insiders out there, there’s so much stuff that’s put out there that’s true that’s not even from insiders. It’s hard to keep stuff under wraps.
I knew about Matt Ryan for three weeks.
FOS: How do you trust that you can sit on it and no one else is going to break it?
JG: My ethics and edict for the job are that, I’ve got to get three independent sources that I know it from and that the information’s true. Because also, like, let’s say the Matt Ryan stuff, it was different [intel]. Sources were giving me information about what the roles would be. I had to make sure I had it down, dead to rights.
And it took me a couple weeks to get that down because the information kept changing. Because people swear they know. And the reason why I try to get three independent ones, let’s say I talk to one source, and he gave that information to another source, and it’s wrong, it’s two different people but it’s really not—it’s the same pipeline. That’s why I need a third independent source all the time.
FOS: It’s got to be pretty wild to break that news about a guy who’s on a rival show, on-air, literally at the exact same time.
JG: Yeah, I kind of got a kick out of that. I know they didn’t! I talked to Matt. I even talked to the CBS PR person, who I love, Jen Sabatelle, who asked, “Why didn’t you call us?”
I’m not telling anybody! Are you guys out of your mind? I’m the most paranoid guy in the world, and I lost two other stories this year 10 minutes before I was going on the air with them.
My job is I wait for Fox NFL Sunday for the bigger stuff [so I can break it on TV instead of social media]. I told them both, there was no way I was calling either of them to give them a heads up because I’m sure they’d be obligated to tell someone at the network.
FOS: Besides the Patriots Spygate tapes, what was your biggest scoop ever?
JG: That was by far the biggest but I’ve had lots of big ones. I had Raiders offensive lineman Barret Robbins going AWOL the night before the Super Bowl. It was ABC’s Super Bowl and I broke it the night before.
I broke the end of the NFL Lockout [in 2011], when I was the only reporter who didn’t go report on it every day. I broke that around 4:00 in the morning. Brett Favre getting traded to the Jets in the middle of the night, and also when he came out of retirement to play for the Vikings, which was pretty sick.
I had the second Spygate video, where they got popped again. I had the second part of Deflategate. For Jim Harbaugh’s last year with the 49ers, I came on the first week of the show and said that no matter what happens, even if they win the Super Bowl, he’ll be out. I think he was gone two-thirds of the way through that year. That was wild.
This past year’s Super Bowl—nobody ever breaks news on the day of the Super Bowl—the chatter was that the Jets were going to make their Aaron Rodgers decision the next week. I came out and said, not only have they made their decision, he flew his own plane there Thursday and they told him in 10 minutes, “You’re out.”
That was a huge one. I was shitting my pants that whole time because I knew what I had. As I was going on-air, people with the Jets were trying to steer me in the wrong direction. Even Aaron Glenn. I was like, “Dude, don’t lie to me.” He was like, “I’m not!” Even Michael Strahan told him not to lie, this was Fox’s Super Bowl.
I’m not gonna lie, that put a major dent in our relationship moving forward. Don’t lie to me on our biggest day. Still has. We haven’t talked to this day.
FOS: You do a lot of MMA training at your gym. As someone who’s been as professionally and financially successful as you’ve been, what makes you want to get beaten up all the time?
JG: I would rather that it killed me than I die from not doing it.
What I mean is the mental health part of it—I need teams for my depression, anxiety, and bipolar. There’s a different level of love there with these cats.
And I love coaching people. I just turned 56 this week. I’m still doing it. I get hit. Last year, Maxx Crosby and Derwin James tore my bicep tendons—my supraspinatus—rotator cuff. Got it fixed and I’m back and doing it again. They’re like, “What’s wrong with you?”
I always tell people, teams are everything. I’ve been at it for so long. I was one of the first guys around the NFL fighting MMA, in 2003, when ironically I was working for CBS. At the time, we were so ostracized. Sen. [John] McCain called it human cockfighting. It was banned on TV. We were so ostracized, it brought us closer together.
You’re doing something that 99.999% of the world are unable or unwilling to do. The craziest part is, as fighters we’ve been opening up on mental health stuff for ages. No one’s questioning our manhood, so we can cry on the drop of a dime. The rest of the world is finally catching up.
At practice, with guys like Randy Couture and Chuck Liddell, the baddest dudes on the planet, we’d open up to each other. That’s why I still do it.
FOS: What advice would you give young reporters for breaking big stories?
JG: The number one thing is don’t ever get it wrong. It doesn’t matter about being first—get it right. There’s so much pressure to be first and get it out fast. I could say the craziest things in the world but [because I’ve never gotten a big one wrong] you can take it to the bank.
Number two, go for the relationship instead of the scoop. Not to use somebody, but if you burn a source because you want a scoop you’re going to lose the next 10-20. Outwork the world, and don’t be a face in the crowd. Be your own damn crowd. Be different. Different’s good.
And don’t take yourself too seriously. We’re not covering the Middle East. We’re covering sports.
