Peter King (sportswriter)

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Peter King

Peter King (b. 1958, Springfield, Massachusetts) is a well-respected football columnist for Sports Illustrated, the author of five books, most notably Inside the Helmet, as well as a TV analyst and reporter. Beginning in 2006, he will be a part of Football Night in America, NBC's new Sunday night NFL studio show.[1]

King graduated from Ohio University in 1979, and following graduation, began working for the Cincinnati Enquirer, where he covered college sports and professional football from 1980 to 1985. He was an NFL beat writer for Newsday from 1985 to 1989, when he joined the staff of Sports Illustrated. He writes regularly on the NFL for the magazine, and appears frequently as a commentator on radio and TV talk shows across the nation.

King also writes the popular Monday Morning Quarterback column for SI.com as well as a "Monday Morning Quarterback: Tuesday Edition" edition. Typically, King will elaborate on the game or event he attended in person that weekend. Several recurring features are contained in the online column, including "The 10 Things I Think I Think", where he summarizes the highlights and lowlights of the prior week. He also makes personal observations on non-NFL issues, such as Starbucks (his favorite national chain coffee shop), other sporting events (often with respect to his favorite baseball team, the Boston Red Sox), his daughters, and travel and lodging (he has an issue with the Providence Westin and its policy of charging extra for use of the fitness room). King has also been outspoken in his columns - for example, he chided the Fox Network for putting a show such as Temptation Island on the air.^[1]

He also joined Inside the NFL, the Emmy Award-winning HBO show, in 2002 as a managing editor and reporter. With the return of NFL programming to NBC at the start of the 2006 season, NBC started new studio show called Football Night in America, set between the end of the Sunday afternoon games, and the primetime Sunday Night Football. King joined Bob Costas, Cris Collinsworth, Sterling Sharpe and Jerome Bettis, serving as a special "insider" reporter and analyst for the show, typically highlighting one or two major topics from that day in football.

He also was appointed by the governor of New Jersey in 2005 and served on a fact finding task force in an attempt to end steroid and human growth hormones in high school athletics. Their findings recommended a random drug testing program for high school athletes, the first of its kind for a state. [2]

King lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with his wife Ann and two daughters, Laura and Mary Beth, who attends Colgate University.