Jay Glazer’s job description says he is an NFL “insider.” That gives him a unique perspective to the most talked-about story in Chicago sports: What’s going on inside Brian Urlacher’s brain?
Glazer, who is the “insider” for “Fox NFL Sunday,” has emerged as the media conduit for the Bears’ middle linebacker. Urlacher decided whatever he has to say is going to go through Glazer via a blog and question-and-answer format on foxsports.com.
As a result, Glazer now is a central figure in the story. Glazer said he talks to Urlacher often. During an interview Monday, Glazer said the star’s silent treatment isn’t about criticism directed at him. Rather, it is about his teammates.
“That’s about 95 percent of it,” Glazer said. “It’s not about his back. He said, ‘I can take that. I don’t care.’ He gets ticked off about what they say about his teammates, especially when times are tough.
“I’ve tried to convince him, ‘Hey, get less sensitive about what they say about your team.’ He’s protective of his friends … more so than anybody I’ve ever met. If you’re his guy, he lives and dies for you.”
Glazer was told there will be plenty of people skeptical that Urlacher’s snubbing of the media isn’t personal.
“You guys don’t know him,” Glazer said. “I know him. That’s how he really is.”
Glazer says Urlacher has done this in the past, but he never has taken the brief, clipped responses to this extent. A few weeks ago when Urlacher began his media boycott, Glazer asked him, “What are you doing?”
“He said, ‘Buddy, I’m just tired. I’m frustrated,'” Glazer said. “I’ve seen the level of frustration in him.”
Last week Glazer said Urlacher called him about doing a blog and answering questions on the Internet as a way to get around claims that he wasn’t living up to his responsibilities to the fans. The request, Glazer pointed out, comes from a player so old school he didn’t get his first e-mail address until last week.
After they talked for a few minutes, Glazer wanted to make sure of the ground rules.
“I told him straight up, ‘Brian, if we’re going to do this every week, I’m not going to be your PR guy,'” Glazer said. “He said, ‘OK.’ I said, ‘I’m going to ask you questions and hammer you.’ He said, ‘Hammer away.'”
Glazer said he first met Urlacher when Urlacher was a young player at the Pro Bowl. They quickly formed a bond.
“He trusts me, and I trust him,” Glazer said. “To me it’s a badge of honor.”
Urlacher hardly is the only player Glazer has befriended on the beat. The 38-year-old New York native says he has 1,500 private numbers of personnel throughout the league. He dials them often, using as many as 11,000 minutes per month on his cell phone.
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For lack of a better term, Glazer is a world-class schmoozer. He has an outgoing personality who takes the “hey, let’s have dinner” approach.
It also doesn’t hurt that Glazer does commentary on Ultimate Fighting and is an expert in the martial arts, giving him another in with players and coaches in a sport bent on violence.
“I’m uncomfortable talking about how I become friends with these guys,” Glazer said. “It’s just who I am.”
Yet Glazer has more than his share of critics who claim that he crosses the lines of journalistic standards.
A tight relationship with Giants defensive end Michael Strahan led to Glazer being the godfather to his daughter.
That’s a red-light violation in Journalism 101. How can Glazer be objective about Strahan? How can we be sure he is objective about Urlacher or his other NFL friends?
Glazer, though, insists just the opposite is true.
“Because I have these relationships, I can ask the tougher questions,” Glazer said. “I once had Strahan on my radio show, and I dropped the hammer on him. I do it with other players. They probably wouldn’t take those kinds of questions from somebody they didn’t know.”
Ultimately, Glazer said relationships lead to stories, and more important, scoops.
“My job is different than the beat writer,” Glazer said. “My job is to get the inside information. My job is to get as much information for the fans.”
His methods anger his competitors, although there probably is some jealously involved. Truth be told, there isn’t a Chicago media member who would hang up if Urlacher happened to call this week.
“What am I supposed to do? Tell him to talk to everyone else? I don’t want the exclusive?” Glazer said. “If he says, ‘I want to give it to you, I don’t have a relationship with the other guys,’ what’s wrong with that?”
Glazer has his exclusive. Now Chicago reporters and Bears fans will watch to see if the “insider” indeed applies the hammer to Urlacher.
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