In the world of sports media, things are certainly a lot different today than they were five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago and thirty years ago. For Gary Myers, a veteran of 8 years covering the Dallas Cowboys for the Dallas Morning News and 29 years as an NFL columnist for the New York Daily News, staying involved with covering football these days meant transitioning into something different.
Myers has been working on various projects including writing books and consulting on a documentary about Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.
“It was a pretty long newspaper career,” said Myers who left the Daily News in 2018. “It was a really good time to get out of there because unfortunately the Daily News is just not what it used to be.”
Myers’ most recent book is titled “Once a Giant” and chronicles the 1986 Super Bowl champion New York Giants. He is also working on a book that examines the same subject as the documentary that he is working on…who was the bigger reason for the New England Patriots’ dynasty?
Bill Belichick or Tom Brady?
“I think people’s opinions have gotten skewed by the fact that Tom went to Tampa and won a Super Bowl in his first year there and Belichick made the playoffs once in four years without Tom,” said Myers. “I would say my end evaluation is 60-40 Brady but it’s not 80-20 and some people think it’s 90-10. Somebody had to draft the kid.”
Speaking of Tom Brady, the future Hall of Fame quarterback is set to take his talents to the Fox NFL broadcast booth this season teaming with Kevin Burkhardt on the network’s top team. While some are questioning just how committed Brady is to the job and how good he will be on television, Myers is convinced that Brady will be a star on TV.
Myers wrote a book about Brady and Peyton Manning back in 2015 and was able to spend a lot of time with Brady.
“Tom was very cooperative and gracious with me,” said Myers. “He’s a genuinely good guy who I think is really bright. He’s very well-spoken and eloquent. I think he’s going to be great on TV. People are going to be looking for him to fail and I think they’re going to be disappointed because I think he’s going to be very good at this.”
In addition to being an NFL writer and columnist during his career, Myers was also the NFL insider for HBO’s “Inside The NFL” from 1989 to 2001. Today, writers who have been NFL insiders on TV include the likes of Adam Schefter and Ian Rapoport. Back in the day, it was Myers who followed in the footsteps of the legendary Will McDonough.
Even though he has transitioned away from his legendary newspaper career, Myers has been able to stay connected to covering football. With the way that the newspaper business has changed, the writing was on the wall that it was time to step away and find another way to cover the NFL.
Myers was not ready to call it a career.
“I still have way too much energy to retire,” said Myers. “I’m taking advantage of what I call my institutional knowledge and put it to another way of using it. If I knew I was going to be this happy writing books and working as a consultant on other projects, I would have gotten out of the newspaper business a long time before then.”
When Myers was writing books while also working full-time for the Daily News, he had to find a way and the time to juggle both responsibilities. In the case of “Once A Giant”, he spent two years just working on the book and on a subject that meant a lot to him.
And he was able to put a lot of TLC into it without having to divide any time with a newspaper life.
“It is the best book I’ve ever written,” said Myers. “I was incredibly passionate about the subject. It’s all I was working on for two years. I didn’t take on any other projects.”
While Myers has transitioned into books and other projects, the newspaper scene in New York City, as well as many other markets around the country, continues to descend. When Myers was with the Daily News, he felt that his employer had the gold standard when it came to covering sports in the Big Apple.
Today, Myers laments what the Daily News now is and gives credit to his once bitter rival, the New York Post, for continuing to do things the right way.
“They (the New York Post) are the only newspaper, in this area at least, that are still approaching it like it’s 1985 in terms of the resources that they put into covering sports,” said Myers. “They still send five people to the Super Bowl. The Daily News is a shell of what it used to be. That’s sad to me.”
The role of NFL beat writers and columnists continue to evolve because the access has changed significantly. When Myers covered the Dallas Cowboys for the Dallas Morning News, there was always a plethora of players available for him to talk to and that left him with a good problem to have when he went back to the press room to work.
“The hardest decision I had to make when I left the locker room was which story do I want to write because I had about ten in my notebook,” said Myers.
Fast forward to today and things have changed for reporters.
Many times, there are only a handful of players in the locker room during media access periods and that restricts the ability of the writers to create relationships with the players and get exclusive stories.
What you have now are the same reporters going up to the same players at the same time.
“I am convinced that if the NFL had its way and the teams had their way, the only people that would be covering the teams now would be the teams’ website, the teams’ video department and they would grant access to the network partners to come in before the games,” said Myers. “They don’t need newspapers anymore and they don’t need local radio stations. It’s just different. The day-to-day media is no longer a priority to the teams.”
And that is a big reason why Gary Myers is enjoying the new chapter of his storied career covering the NFL. He doesn’t have to worry about the day-to-day grind of covering a team because he’s made the very successful transition to writing books and finding other ways to tell stories about the National Football League.