Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer faces backlash for poor handling of the Brian Allen coronavirus news

Not a good look.

In today’s sports media landscape — where information can reach a mass audience in an instant — it’s incredibly rare for a reporter to tease a “big, big news” story for 24 hours, tip off his competitors and actually have something significant to report.

And for some reason, that’s exactly what Fox Sports and Jay Glazer tried this week when the NFL reporter hyped up an unknown scoop, promising to unveil the news during a Wednesday night broadcast of Fox Football Now on FS1.

Obviously, there was huge interest in what Glazer, who has broken huge NFL stories in the past, had to say. He teased the news as a non-transactional national story but decided to sit on the information until the little-watched program on FS1 aired at 11 p.m. ET.

That news ended up being that Rams center Brian Allen tested positive for the coronavirus and had nearly recovered.

Though it’s significant that Allen was the first known active NFL player to test positive for the virus, Glazer’s handling of the news was beyond suspect. He treated a global pandemic as a tool to boost ratings for a show and seemingly expected the news to equate to Rudy Gobert’s coronavirus diagnosis. It didn’t, though.

The NFL is in the offseason while Gobert’s positive test served as the catalyst for the national sports stoppage. This was news that could have been reported far earlier, and Glazer justifiably faced backlash for how he handled this report.

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