NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport: Inside Being an NFL Insider

Ian Rapoport sits across the desk and Rich is gleefully testing the new corporate plumbing. Last night up in Connecticut, prepping for SportsCenter, the producers asked which NFL draft expert he wanted on the show. They floated names from the ESPN side. Rich said, let's take this merger for a spin, and threw out Daniel Jeremiah. An our guy. By ours, he means everybody now.

Three hours later: Daniel was set.

Rich pretends to be scandalized. Three hours to respond? No, no, Rapoport corrects, three hours for the process. It's not a small company, man. The room laughs. Rich shoots back that Rapoport would have responded faster, because Rapoport is constantly on his phone. Which becomes the joke of the segment.

The table interrogates the NFL Insider's relationship to his device. Is he a two-phone guy like Schefter? Rapoport is anti-two-phone. He explains the logistics like a man who has thought about this. He only has two pockets. If both have phones in them, there is no space for anything else. One phone, always.

Then the bit gets juicier. Rapoport admits he was instructed not to be on his phone during this interview. Jerry told him. Studio access required device discipline. Rich completely understands the pull, of course. The phone buzzes, you might be missing something, that's the gig. So could Rapoport ever actually attend the Masters? He'd make an exception. The longest he's ever gone without his phone in hand? When he sleeps.

Does he do the Tom Pelissero thing and sleep with an earbud in? Rapoport draws the line there. That's totally weird, he says. He has a different system. During free agency, he keeps his phone ringer on loud, under his pillow. And his wife, for whatever reason, does not register the sound. Her body doesn't react to it. He recounts working a story at 12:45 in the morning, in bed, ringer blaring, and she has no recollection of the call the next day.

Rich is delighted. For what you do for a living, that's the greatest relationship you could possibly have. Unbelievable. Rapoport allows that she tunes him out in other ways too. The room cracks up. Rich, of course, has to ask: she's a Mets fan, isn't she? She is by marriage, Rapoport says, with the long-suffering shrug of a man who knows.

Somewhere in the texture of the bit is the actual job description: an NFL Insider lives inside the buzz, sleeps next to the buzz, and hopes the person sleeping next to him does not.