Pro Teams in the Coward Days.

Chris Mortensen was great. He also had non-paranoid access

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This column also appears at Barrett Sports Media.

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The passing of industry giant Chris Mortensen produced reams of tributes both inside and outside of journalism, in part because Mortensen had developed such longtime relationships with coaches, GMs, owners and power brokers – but most of all with the athletes he covered.

So it shouldn’t shock anyone that athletes as different as Peyton Manning and Michael Vick were quick to praise Mortensen, who was taken by throat cancer at age 72. They actually knew the journalist, and he actually knew them.

In some ways, then, we’re not only mourning the loss of a great reporter and a good man. We’re also thinking back wistfully on an era of media relations that no longer exists in sports – and it’s to the absolute detriment of every team that follows the idiotic advice that has led to this corrosion.