How spite drove legendary sportswriter Jeff Pearlman to become a TikTok and YouTube all-star
The former 'Sports illustrated' scribe discusses the enduring impact of his John Rocker profile, and how social video propelled his career.
Jeff Pearlman has never been one to shy away from difficult subjects. Over nearly three decades in sports journalism, he's built a career on the stories others might avoid — the controversial figures, the fallen heroes, the complex personalities that resist easy categorization.
Just look at his 1999 Sports Illustrated profile of Atlanta Braves reliever John Rocker. Filled with inflammatory comments about minorities and foreigners, that article became one of the most consequential sports interviews of the past quarter century, earning recognition for its unflinching portrayal of an athlete's unfiltered thoughts.
Now 53-years-old and based in Southern California, Pearlman has found an unlikely second act as a social media storyteller. After pointed criticism from Defector's editor about "old men" giving new media advice, Pearlman defiantly joined TikTok — and discovered he had a knack for it. With 260,000 followers and counting, he parlayed that success into “Press Box Chronicles,” a weekly YouTube series that revisits the biggest stories of his career and examines sports legends through the lens of nostalgia and deep reporting.
The show reflects Pearlman's broader evolution as a storyteller. Where his Sports Illustrated years were defined by access and real-time reporting, his current work — including 10 books, four of which have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list — focuses on retrospective analysis and the kind of character-driven narratives that made him one of the most recognizable voices in sports journalism. His recent subjects have included Barry Bonds, Brett Favre, the 1990s Dallas Cowboys, and the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, each explored with the same curiosity and willingness to dig into uncomfortable truths that defined his early magazine work.
But Pearlman's career also serves as a case study in how sports journalism has changed. The deep-access profiles that were once Sports Illustrated's bread and butter have largely disappeared, replaced by carefully managed athlete brands and social media content. As a result, journalists like Pearlman have had to adapt, finding new ways to tell stories and connect with audiences in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.
In this edition of Depth Perception, Pearlman reflects on the stories that defined his career, the evolution of sports media, and why he believes nostalgia might be journalism's secret weapon in the digital age. This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity. —Parker Molloy
Can you tell me a bit about yourself and your career?
I started my career as a food and fashion writer at the Nashville Tennessean. Weird beginning, but true. I was really bad at it. Got bumped around a lot at the newspaper until I finally was demoted to the police beat because I had no skills whatsoever and just kept making mistake after mistake. I learned a lot on the cops beat. Then I was moved to high school wrestling — covered high school wrestling in 1996. I was definitely the number one middle Tennessee high school wrestling writer in 1996. You can't take that away from me.
I always wanted to be a sports writer, found my footing, used that to get a job at Sports Illustrated. Got hired as a reporter, fact checker, worked my way up, wound up being a baseball writer. I've spent the past 20 years writing books.
Why did you want to be a sports writer?
When I was a kid, we used to get two newspapers.… The New York Times and The Reporter Dispatch, the local newspaper. We'd be around the table and my dad would read this section and my mom would read this section. My older brother would read this section, but nobody read the sports section. So I would read the sports section and I got really into the colors and names. I grew up in this very sheltered, very tiny, very white town. I remember being fascinated — seeing guys with big Afros and guys with tons of jewelry and guys named Joaquin and Malik and just being like, "Oh, this is really colorful and cool."
I wound up being a big sports fan, but I was just an ordinary athlete…. But through journalism, you could throw yourself into something you love. So I started writing sports for my high school newspaper — the Mahopac High School Chieftain.
I had a moment. I think I was a senior and I wrote a story called "Cheerleading: Sport or Activity?" with a question mark. I wrote this piece declaring that cheerleading was not a sport — it was an activity. All the cheerleaders were really pissed off at me. I remember being in the cafeteria and a bunch of the cheerleaders surrounding me and yelling at me. It was the day before a game, so they were all wearing their cheerleader outfits and were all permed up with the makeup. I was just some nerd who had never kissed a girl or a boy or anybody. I'm surrounded by them paying attention to me. The cheerleaders are paying attention to me….
I always count that as the moment where I was like, "Oh, people notice you if you write. You get attention if you write. People hear you if you write." That was a big deal for me.
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What prompted you to launch “Press Box Chronicles” on YouTube after decades in traditional media?
It's kind of weird. About a year ago, the editor of the website Defector wrote something after there were a lot of layoffs at the LA Times and Sports Illustrated. When I was on Twitter at the time — I no longer am — I offered some top-of-the-head advice to journalists. The editor of Defector, a guy named Tom Ley, just thrashed me and said, basically, "What does this old man know about new media? Who's this guy to give advice? The last person you want to take TikTok advice from is Jeff Pearlman."
I was like, "Fuck it. I'm going to join TikTok." I'd never even considered it.
[So] I get on TikTok and I find it to be this really awesome storytelling medium. Before long, I have about 260,000 followers on TikTok. I don't even know how that happened. As a result of that, this company reached out to me and said, "Have you thought about doing a weekly YouTube show?" I was like, "I'm not opposed to it. I like telling stories. It's something different. It's a way of spreading your name. And when you have books come out, you can promote them."
You've covered stories ranging from the John Rocker interview to Bo Jackson's legend to Brett Favre's controversies. What draws you to revisit these career-defining moments through your podcast rather than just moving on to new subjects?
Because my number one thing about sports is nostalgia. My wife is always like, "You're so nostalgic." I'm nostalgic about my kids growing up, nostalgic about hearing some old Hall & Oates song on the radio and remembering where I was. Sports does that for me in a major way.
I wouldn't say I'm nostalgic for John Rocker, but Bo Jackson is a perfect example. Walter Payton is a perfect example. When I was a kid, I remember reading Bo Jackson's autobiography, checking it out of the local library. Walter Payton — I remember being home and watching highlights of him or watching him at the Super Bowl. I like stories that take me back to a very innocent and pure time of childhood joy when these athletes were larger than life to me. I really get a kick out of that more than I get a kick out of watching the NBA finals today.
It's been 25 years since the John Rocker story ran in Sports Illustrated. In your “Press Box Chronicles” episode about it, you call it "the interview that changed my life forever." How has your perspective on that story evolved over time?
I can look back at it with humor. I think it's really funny.… For me, it's instructional about how to be a journalist. It was eye-opening.
The thing that I find depressing about it more than anything is if John Rocker came along today — I mean, he's kind of surged on X over the last however long — it wouldn't even be a big deal. He said the same shit that Donald Trump and his followers say every day. He was bashing foreigners. All right, that checks out. Bashing gays, that checks out. He mocked a Black teammate, called him a “fat monkey” — that checks out. Everything he was saying then, you would think we'd evolve, but it's actually the opposite. When I think back to it and really think about it, I think how sad it is that he's now the norm. You would think he would have been just an outcast forever, and he's probably more popular than ever, at least on social media. That's really depressing.
The Rocker story came out in an era before social media amplified every controversy. How do you think it would unfold differently if it happened today?
First of all, we have the attention span of gnats today. So I think it would come and go very quickly. It wouldn't have nearly the shock value. You have to remember that this is truly pre-social media. Sports Illustrated — 3 million people [got] that magazine. It comes out, it's a bombshell. It's all over sports talk radio, and sports talk radio is an enormous deal. It's all over the TV morning shows, and TV morning shows are an enormous deal. It gets spoofed on “Saturday Night Live” when “Saturday Night Live” was appointment viewing, not something you DVR'd or watched later. It was like a moment where people stopped. Does this guy need sensitivity training? Hank Aaron makes a statement. The Braves make a statement. They suspend him.
Nowadays… it'd be like, "Here it is. He said it. Oh my God, that's crazy." Gone. That's it. So it wouldn't be bigger. It'd be much smaller nowadays.
You'd also get much more criticism of the writer. I got some criticism, but nowadays you'd have the whole right wing going after you: "This guy did Rocker wrong." So it would be worse for the writer than it was for me.
“We're just looking for clicks. Something has snapped in us in that regard…. I do feel like we have replaced telling a story because it's good and interesting and maybe useful with what is going to get us the most clicks so our publication or website or TikTok feed can keep flowing and generating dough.” — Jeff Pearlman
You mentioned in a blog post that the story is an example of not interjecting opinions into an interview and letting the subject talk uninterrupted. Can you elaborate on how that philosophy developed and how it shaped your approach to difficult interviews?
One thing I've learned over time… you're just not there to debate the person. You're there to learn from people. It's actually one of the cool things about being a journalist. I used to have an interview series on my old website and I interviewed a current KKK member, like a head of the KKK. To me, I'm genuinely fascinated by how you became the head of the KKK. I know you hate Jews. I don't even care. I am Jewish and I don't care because I know who you are. That's fine. I want to know how you became you. That's part of journalism.
I don't know if I ever really had the inclination to argue with people I was interviewing. I have a lot of flaws, but one thing my parents used to always say is I was always interested in what people had to say and what they were trying to tell you. So with John Rocker, I was never like, "Hey, let me tell you as a Jewish guy..." That's just not in my impulse.
Several of the subjects you've written about — Barry Bonds, Brett Favre, John Rocker — have been controversial for one reason or another. How do you approach writing about people whose behavior you might personally find objectionable while still trying to understand them as complex human beings?
I love that. To me, that's part of the fun of it all. One of the criticisms I would get is, "You only write about controversial people." I was like, "Look, if someone wants me to write a book about the 1999 Cleveland Browns, I'm happy to do it. But I don't see that many people clamoring for that." Controversial people are interesting. Controversial figures in sports are interesting. They happen to sell better… If I was writing a biography of Russell Wilson, that would sell five copies because who gives a shit?
I really enjoy it. Even Barry Bonds — I hate Barry Bonds. Barry Bonds is an asshole. But how someone becomes an asshole is very interesting. I enjoy controversial people, even John Rocker. I can't say I didn't enjoy that experience. It was a good experience for me. It was interesting.
The sports media landscape has evolved significantly regarding how we cover athletes' personal lives and controversies. How do you think about the line between legitimate public interest and invasion of privacy?
It's interesting. There was a story the other day I saw on SI.com about Mary Lou Retton being arrested for DUI. Mary Lou Retton was Olympic gold medalist in 1984. That [was] 41 years ago. That is SI.com looking for clicks. Mary Lou Retton in her late 50s getting pulled over for DUI in West Virginia. I'm not encouraging Mary Lou Retton to drive drunk, but how is that a story? How is that even a sniff of a story? It's a story for the local newspaper in West Virginia. But how is that a national story?
That's a classic example of how we've really crossed the line. We're just looking for clicks. Something has snapped in us in that regard. There's no way that story [was] a story 20 years ago. I do feel like we have replaced telling a story because it's good and interesting and maybe useful with what is going to get us the most clicks so our publication or website or TikTok feed can keep flowing and generating dough.
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Journalist Molly Knight writes The Long Game, a newsletter about “baseball for people who want to know more,” providing insights that go beyond the analytics that have taken over the sport in the past couple of decades. Instead, it focuses on the human beings who play the game. She covered the Dodgers for a number of years and is also the author of the …
How has the destruction and rebuilding of sports media affected storytelling, particularly the kind of deep-dive reporting that defined your SI years?
What has happened sucks. I was at SI from '96 to '03. Back in the day, just as an example, let's say I wanted to do a story about [St. Louis] Cardinals pitcher Matt Morris…. You spend a day with someone and you really get to know them and understand them. You talk to his wife or his girlfriend, his parents, and you get to go into stories and, "Oh, here's some old pictures." You'd have this creation of something substantial that wasn't only good for you and the readers, but Matt Morris would have this thing 20 years after he's retired to show his kids.
That barely exists anymore. Agents control everything. Very few people would be like, "Oh, yeah, that'd be great. I'd love a reporter to come in," because you don't know what that person's going to write. There's this real [phenomenon of],“Why should I allow you to do that when I can control my own message on TikTok, on Instagram, on whatever?”
The only reason it works for me writing books is because I write about subjects generally who are no longer active. Writing about the Shaq-Kobe Lakers — well, those guys haven't been active in 20 years. So they're more open to talking. But trying to get LeBron to sit down for five hours? It's not going to happen. It sucks. It's a bummer.
What do you see as the future of sports journalism? Where do you see it going and where would you like to see it go?
As a guy who loves writing, I would love to see 3,000-word profiles… which you still have to a certain degree at places like The Ringer. But I think mainly what you see, honestly, is TikTok in a way is the future and the present, and Instagram is the future and the present, where people are reporting via speaking into a camera, myself included. I don't love it, but it kind of is what it is.
I'm like a dinosaur. I'm 53. I came up in a newspaper. I was developed in a magazine. I write print books for a living. I'm kind of a dinosaur who has adjusted to a certain degree. But it doesn't mean I'm happy about it. If I could trade TikTok — if TikTok could never exist and we went back to long magazine stories and looking forward to them arriving in the mail — I'm 100% in.
Further reading and viewing from Jeff Pearlman
“One Man’s Ego vs. the NFL: Donald Trump and the Demise of the USFL” (Press Box Chronicles, April 21, 2025)
The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson (Mariner Books, 2022)
Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s (Avery Publishing Group, 2014)
Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero (Harper Perennial, 2007)
“At Full Blast” (Sports Illustrated, Dec. 27, 1999)