The first rule of sports media — Don't mess with family

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When it comes to the off-field lives of athletes and coaches, it can be hard to tell where the lines are currently drawn.

Athletes and celebrities broadcast their smallest details to millions of followers on Instagram and Snapchat. Journalists have instant access to court records as well as friends and associates willing to talk over text and Facebook Messenger.

Interested fans aren't innocent either, as traffic numbers show they're sopping up every bit with each follow and click.

And yet if there's an easy-to-define line that media and fans should never cross, it's this (and I'll put it in bolded caps to make it clear):

STAY AWAY FROM FAMILY.

OK, so that's also a murky territory in this age of LaVar Ball and significant others touting their own valuable social media brands.

But when you know, you know.

And Kansas City radio host Kevin Kietzman should have known better before bringing up the 2012 overdose death of Andy Reid's son as a way to make an awful and inappropriate point about Reid's leadership of a football team.

Kietzman has been trafficking in this sort of stupidity for decades now. But it says something about the callousness of this statement that it reached an audience outside those unfortunate to live within the broadcast distance of his radio towers. He was yanked from the airwaves on Tuesday and there's no doubt that his station, which has a contract with the Chiefs, has a lot of making right to do.

This really shouldn't have been that hard for Kietzman. There are so many things that we can rightfully hold sports figures accountable for, from on-field decisions and performance to relationships with teammates and those around the organization. Second-guessing a man as a football coach doesn't give us license to second guess him as a father or a husband.

Will there sometimes be an instance where family news is inbounds? Sure, especially if it involves an issue like domestic violence.

But anything outside of that and it's not too much to ask that media and fans afford athletes and coaches — not to mention their family members — the private lives the rest of us enjoy without worry.

Especially when it involves a situation as tragic as the one Reid already had to live through in a way that was already too public.

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