NFL Network opts not to renew contract of JIM TROTTER

One issue with sports leagues hiring reporters to cover their leagues is that there are unspoken limits on how aggressively those reporters can cover the league.

Mike Silver, who previously worked at NFL Network, has been open about his departure. Jim Trotter, whose time at NFL Network is coming to an end, could be an example of a journalist who was a little too dedicated to his craft.

Trotter tweeted on Monday, "This will be my final week with the NFL Media Group." "Over the weekend, I was informed that my contract would not be renewed." I'd like to express my gratitude to NFL Network and NFL.com for the lessons learned and proved over the last five years."

That last line was most likely not a result of carelessness or coincidence. Lessons were learned and confirmed.

Trotter may have learned and/or confirmed that there is a line that NFL Media reporters cannot cross — and that he may have crossed it. If he did, it could have happened when Trotter pressed Commissioner Roger Goodell during his February 2023 pre-Super Bowl press conference about the lack of diversity in NFL Media management and the NFL Media newsroom.

Trotter alerted Goodell that the same issue was raised in 2022, and there had been no satisfactory answer or progress since then.

This year, Trotter quotes James Baldwin to Goodell at one point, saying, "I can't believe what you say because I see what you do."

Keep an eye on the conversation. Draw your own conclusions about the question's significance to Trotter. Concerning whether Goodell appreciated being confronted about the situation in public.

"Can I answer your question?" Goodell asks Trotter at one point. Trotter was responding to Goodell's claim that he doesn't run the newsroom, as Trotter later explained to Richard Deitsch of TheAthletic.com (via AwfulAnnouncing.com).

"My indirect response to him was, 'You do,' and that's when he cut me off and said, 'Can I answer?'" 'May I respond?' Because, in reality, the league office determines our budget at NFL Media. They are aware of who the employees are and are not."

Trotter will soon transition from "are" to "are not," and it's difficult not to wonder if the decision was influenced in whole or in part by his decision to question the Commissioner about diversity issues at NFL Media during consecutive pre-Super Bowl press conferences.

So why would you do it in public? Trotter believes he had no other choice but to bring the issue up with Goodell.

"They don't let you get close enough to the Commissioner to actually have these dialogues," Trotter explained to Deitsch. "So, I knew I'd asked him about it a year before, and I knew there hadn't been any progress." There was no real progress in the areas I asked him about a year ago. And so I felt it was important to ask him in that situation because it's not something I haven't raised internally with the powers that be at the media group over the last year."

NFL Media declined to comment on the situation.

It will be interesting to hear if Trotter believes his departure is the result of being too journalistic for the league's liking. While the NFL is unlikely to express to its in-house reporters the existence of a line that cannot be crossed, the NFL should go the other way, reminding on-the-job reporters that they can cover any aspect of league business freely and aggressively, no matter how embarrassing it may be to Big Shield.

That is unlikely to occur. Consider what Silver said after leaving NFL Network.

"Assume you work for Procter & Gamble and you're going on Procter & Gamble live from Procter & Gamble Studios and discussing a controversy that could bring the entire operation down," Silver said in 2021. "It would be somewhat awkward."

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