Greg Bedard Is Leaving the Globe for Sports Illustrated

It’s been rumored for a while now, but Globe football columnist Greg A. Bedard is officially making the jump to Sports Illustrated. A few weeks ago, Boston Sports Media Watch’s Bruce Allen first mentioned that it might happen, and on Wednesday, Bedard, who joined the Globe in 2010, formally announced the move on Twitter. He’ll be a senior writer at SI and likely contribute to the yet-to-be-named site that, according to Deadspin, will be built around Peter King.

For Patriots fans, this is a sad development. While he wasn’t technically a beat writer, nobody in recent years has filed more interesting copy about the Pats, which certainly isn’t an easy team to cover. They don’t serve up much information to anyone. (As is their right.) My former coworker Hector Longo used to joke that on the Patriots beat, reporting a switch in the weight room from pounds to kilograms is considered a scoop. In December, the Globe’s Shalise Manza Young told me that when she first started covering the Pats, ESPN’s Michael Smith—a Globe alum—gave her some good advice.

“One of the things he told me is the best way to cover this team is to not deal with this team,” Young says. “You’re not really going to get a lot from inside the building. You have to find other means and people you can trust.”

Bedard’s feature New England’s innovative no-huddle offense was an exception to that rule. In the article, which ran in October, he directly quoted Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. Outside of scheduled press conferences, it’s astonishingly rare to get those two on the record. (It should be noted that the piece was flattering, which probably made it slightly easier to get them to talk.) Bedard wasn’t a scoop machine, but he’s been creative and informative. And now, he joins a long list of talented Patriots beat writers who have moved on from the dailies: Smith (Globe) went to ESPN, Mike Reiss (Globe) moved to ESPN Boston, Christopher L. Gasper (Globe) has become a columnist at the paper, Adam Kilgore (Globe) joined the Washington Post to cover baseball, and the NFL Network hired Albert Breer (Globe) and Ian Rapoport (Herald). If Bedard’s replacement does a good job, he or she probably won’t stay at the Globe for too long. Unfortunately, that’s inevitable.