Jeff Pearlman asks why Jay Glazer gets a free pass for his intimate relationships with sources

For 18 years, Jay Glazer has hosted an annual pool party for NFL head coaches at the league’s owners meetings, and Jeff Pearlman wants to know why nobody has ever had a problem with it.

On a recent TikTok, the veteran sportswriter — who has been one of the more thoughtful outside voices on the Dianna Russini story since it broke — responded to a conversation Jemele Hill was having about Glazer and the industry’s selective outrage over source relationships. When he first weighed in back last month, before Russini had resigned and before the extent of her relationship with Mike Vrabel had fully come out, Pearlman framed the situation as a painful double standard while stopping short of saying her career should be over. He’s not stopping short anymore.

“I think Dianna Russini shouldn’t work anymore in this business, I do. I think it’s bullsh*t,” Pearlman said. “But, man, do we make allowances for men. We make so many allowances for men. Jay Glazer is the perfect example. You know why Jay Glazer isn’t having sex with the athletes? Because he’s a heterosexual male and he covers men, otherwise, he’s doing anything but. ‘Hey, come to my BBQ. Hey, let me work you out. Hey, you’re my buddy. Hey, let’s hang out. Hey, tell me stuff, it’s OK.’ Like, that’s access journalism 101. That’s exchanging for exchanging. That’s exactly what he does.”

It’s worth remembering what was happening at those owners’ meetings this year. As Pablo Torre recently reported, Russini and Vrabel were seen hosting a competing party directly across the pool from Glazer’s coaches, who were gathering in March. It was an almost absurdly literal illustration of what Pearlman is now saying outright, that what Russini was doing and what Glazer does look remarkably similar from a distance, with the key difference being who was involved and how far the relationship went.

“There’s no excusing Dianna Russini. It’s a bullsh*t move. She deserves to lose her job,” Pearlman continued. “It’s just weird how we’re OK because it’s men being pals with men kind of thing. Like Jay Glazer, honestly, people now make allowances; they say, ‘Well, he’s not a reporter. He’s a fact-finder…’ But it’s the same bullsh*t. It’s the exact same bullsh*t. You’re building intimate relationships with sources, sources are giving you information, and in exchange for that intimate relationship, you will protect them. What’s different besides you’re not having your dick in someone’s hand? What’s the difference?”

Pearlman isn’t saying Russini and Glazer did the same thing. He’s saying the industry has never applied the same level of scrutiny to the transactional nature of male access journalism that it applied to Russini the moment those photos went public. Nobody spent weeks auditing Glazer’s old reporting for favorable coverage of coaches he barbecues with every spring. Nobody asked what Adam Schefter, Ian Rapoport, Shams Charania, or Adrian Wojnarowski gave up in exchange for the source relationships that made their careers.

The access game has always involved give and take — information in exchange for intimacy, access in exchange for protection — and the sports media world has been comfortable treating that as just how things work, right up until Dianna Russini was caught by Page Six on a rooftop bungalow at an Arizona resort with a married NFL head coach.

“I just want to say: Dianna Russini deserved it, but why are we OK with trading of favors in sports just because it’s two men?” he added. “It’s just weird. I just don’t think it’s right. And we need to really reevaluate what we’re doing here, from the whole Shams thing and the Woj thing, and the Jay Glazer thing, and the exchange of intimate relationships, friendships, hanging out… Just because you’re not having sex doesn’t mean it’s not intimate in a certain way.”

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