Press Box Access: Recent Episodes
Evergreen Podcasts
Sit down with host Todd Jones and other sportswriters who knew the greatest athletes and coaches, and experienced first-hand some of the biggest sports moments in the past 50 years. They’ll share stories behind the stories -- some they’ve only told to each other.
Filip Bondy describes his four decades as a sportswriter as being “crazy, stupid, frustrating, wonderful and a wild ride.” This episode explains why. Fights between writers. Lou Piniella flipping the bird. The Pine Tar Game’s connection to Rush Limbaugh. Billy Martin at his worst. John McEnroe relaying a message for Howard Cosell. Spying on Bernard King. Riding shotgun with Hubie Brown. Travel horror stories. The British press at Wimbledon. An infamous Olympic question. Nancy and Tonya. A mugging near Shea. Oh, and that rental car and . . . a portable toilet. The Associated Press Sports Editors named Bondy one of the top ten sports columnists in America during a career that took him to 48 states, 40 countries, six continents and regular assignments at the Olympics, World Cup and Wimbledon. He also covered the Super Bowl and World Series multiple times, as well as several NBA and Stanley Cup finals. Besides being a columnist, he was a beat writer on local Major League Baseball, NBA and NHL teams for four different newspapers in the New York City market. Bondy spent two stints at the New York Daily News, first from 1983 to ’91, and then as a regular columnist from 1993 until 2015. In-between, he worked two years at the New York Times, primarily as an Olympic and hockey writer. His career began in 1973 as a City Hall reporter, theatre critic and basketball writer for the Paterson (N.J.) News. After leaving to earn his M.A. in Communications at the University of Pennsylvania ’76, Bondy returned to the Paterson News in 1976 as a sportswriter. Four years later, he joined The Record of Hackensack, N.J., where he covered baseball and basketball until moving to the Daily News for the first time in 1983. Bondy is the author or co-author of eight books:
“The Pine Tar Game: The Kansas City Royals, the New York Yankees, and Baseball's Most Absurd and Entertaining Controversy”
“Tip-Off: How the 1984 NBA Draft Changed Basketball Forever”
“The Selling of the Green: The Financial Rise and Moral Decline of the Boston Celtics” – co-author of Harvey Araton
“Who's on Worst?: The Lousiest Players, Biggest Cheaters, Saddest Goats and Other Antiheroes in Baseball History”
“Bleeding Pinstripes: A Season with the Bleacher Creatures at Yankee Stadium
“Dreams of Gold” – co-author with Wayne Coffey
“Chasing the Game: America and the Quest for the World Cup”
“The World Cup: Players, Coaches, History and Excitement”
You can follow Filip on X: @filipbondy. His son, Stefan Bondy, currently covers the New York Knicks for the New York Daily News. @SBondyNYDN Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Geoff Calkins takes us to Memphis, where he has been a high-profile fixture in the sports media scene for 27 years. He tells us about the indefatigable Hubie Brown, a voicemail from the volatile Jerry West, and what the view was like from atop John Calipari’s enemies list. Geoff explains the torture of writing on deadline at an overtime NCAA championship game. He recalls his struggles as a baseball beat reporter and what it was like to cover a Mike Tyson heavyweight championship fight. And he shares a tale involving exotic food at an Olympics. Oh my. Geoff also explains how his childhood leukemia led to writing, and why sports journalism lured him out of a career in law. Calkins has been named the best sports columnist in the country four times by the Associated Press Sports Editors and is a member of the Scripps Howard Hall of Fame. He recently moved to general news columnist at The Daily Memphian, where he had been writing a sports column since 2018 after spending the previous 22 years as the sports columnist for the Commercial Appeal in Memphis. He still hosts “The Geoff Calkins Show,” his sports radio program since 2010, five days a week. His 2016 book, “After the Jump,” chronicles how the Memphis sports scene grew over two decades. Before moving to Memphis, Calkins covered the Florida Marlins for the Sun-Sentinel of South Florida from 1994-96, and he was a high school sports reporter at the Anniston Star in Alabama for two years. Geoff had previously been a clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, and a labor and employment attorney in Washington D.C. Switching from a law career to sports writing at age 31 eventually took Calkins to eight Olympics, multiple Super Bowls, World Series, and Masters golf tournaments. He has won various journalism awards, including a first-place honor in the 2022 APSE contest for a feature story looking back 20 years at Tyson’s loss to Lennox Lewis in Memphis. Calkins graduated from Harvard in 1983 and from Harvard Law in ’87. He served as editor-in-chief for the school’s paper, The Harvard Independent, and worked summer internships for Time Life and the Miami Herald. He earned a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism. Calkins grew up outside Buffalo, New York as the eighth of nine children. You can follow him on X: @geoff_calkins
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We trek into the Pacific Northwest and catch up with John McGrath about his 40 years of writing about sports. He puts us in Dodger Stadium for Kirk Gibson’s famous home run and recounts other deadline horrors. We’re on the field for The Drive, and with John as he stumbles unexpectedly into memorable Olympic moments. He recalls time with a young Michael Jordan, John Elway in his prime, and Bo Jackson playing baseball. Hear about John butting heads with Ken Griffey Jr., and how a magic run by the Mariners saved baseball in Seattle. Oh, and John shares his reaction behind the keyboard as the Seahawks lined up to pass from the one with a Super Bowl on the line.
McGrath was the sports columnist at the Tacoma News Tribune from 1991 until his retirement in 2018. He was a fixture in Seattle, 45 minutes away, and at national and international sporting events. John covered six Olympics and a slew of World Series, Super Bowls, All-Star Games, Final Fours, and championship boxing matches.
Prior to his 27 years in Tacoma, McGrath was a columnist, based in Chicago, for the National Sports Daily from 1989 until that paper folded in 1991. Before that, he was a sports columnist for the Denver Post from 1984-89. John was a general assignment sports reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from 1981-84 after working a year at the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi. His journalism career began at the Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri in 1978-79.
John is a native of Elmhurst, Illinois, outside Chicago. He graduated from the University of Missouri in 1976. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter King enters his 40th year of covering the NFL by sharing tales from his distinguished career. He recalls giving a car ride to rookie Boomer Esiason, being questioned by Bill Parcells as a young reporter, and watching an old movie at the home of Brett Favre. Peter tells us about being around Lawrence Taylor daily and what made L.T. special. Hear how Mike Holmgren granted King unlimited access to the Packers for a week. And Peter talks about owning up to mistakes like the one he made while reporting on Deflategate, how he has balanced working relationships with sources, and much more. King is a prolific NFL analyst for NBC Sports, which he joined in 2018 after 29 years of covering professional football for Sports Illustrated. He has been named national sportswriter of the year three times (2010, ’12, and ’13) in a vote of his peers by the National Sports Media Association. Peter has been a member of the Board of Selectors for the Pro Football Hall of Fame since 1992 and he became a Hall of Famer himself in 2009 when the Pro Football Writers of America named him recipient of the Dick McCann Memorial Award. Peter writes a Monday morning NFL column each week for NBCSports.com, makes weekly appearances on “Pro Football Talk Live” with Mike Florio, and, as he has since the station’s Sunday night studio show debuted in 2006, contributes to “Football Night in America.” He also appears on “The NFL on NBC” YouTube Channel and hosts “The Peter King Podcast.” In addition to his pro football responsibilities, King reports on NBC Sports’ high-profile events, including the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The nearly three decades King spent at Sports Illustrated were highlighted by the widely popular “Monday Morning Quarterback” column that he wrote from 1997 through 2018. The column morphed into “The MMQ,” a pro football microsite for which he also served as editor-in-chief, overseeing a staff of reporters during his final five years at SI. Besides appearances as an NFL insider on NBC, King has worked on television for the HBO show “Inside the NFL” as a managing editor and reporter, was a halftime correspondent on ABC’s “Monday Night Football,” and served as an NFL reporter for CNN. After an internship at the Associated Press, King’s career began in 1980 with a five-year stint at the Cincinnati Enquirer, mostly as a general assignment reporter before taking on the Bengals’ beat in 1984. A year later, he moved to Newsday, where he covered the New York Giants until leaving to join Sports Illustrated in ’89. King earned a bachelor of science degree from Ohio University’s E. W. Scripps School of journalism in 1979. He was born in Springfield, Mass., and grew up in Enfield, Conn. Follow him on Twitter: @peter_king
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This is the second and final part of my conversation with the great storyteller Patrick Reusse, who looks back with humor and irreverence at his 60 years covering Minnesota sports. He takes us on journeys to small towns throughout his home state, recalls the world champion Twins managed by Tom Kelly, and puts us there when Roger Staubach’s Hail Mary Pass caused a whiskey bottle to fly. The longtime sports columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and a member of the Minnesota Broadcasting Hall of Fame also recounts the heat and humor in an epic rant by Vikings coach Jerry Burns. And Pat talks about contrition and lessons learned in his coming around to appreciate women’s athletics. Reusse, 77, is senior columnist for the Star Tribune and is also the host of two popular podcasts: "Reusse Unchained" and "Monday Night Sports Talk with Patrick Reusse and Joe Soucheray." Patrick’s newspaper career started in 1963 as a copy boy for the Minneapolis Morning Tribune. Two years later, he began writing for the Duluth News-Tribune and Herald, then quickly moved to the St. Cloud Times. In 1968, Reusse joined the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where he went on to cover the Twins from 1974-78 before serving as that paper’s sports columnist for nine years, beginning in 1979. He moved to the Star Tribune in 1988 as sports columnist. The native of Fulda, Minnesota also became a fixture in Twin Cities talk radio and television. He was inducted into the Minnesota Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2019. Patrick has done radio and podcast work with KSTP-1500 since 1980, when he partnered with Soucheray on “Sunday Night Sports Talk.” They shared the airwaves together or independently on “Sports Talk” in various forms nearly every year since. Patrick also hosted “Reusse & Company” for that station (2009-10) and co-hosted “Reusse & Mackey” with Phil Mackey from 2010-14. His show “The Ride with Reusse” appeared weekdays from 2014 until September 2018. Reusse began his radio career at KFAM-AM in St. Cloud in the mid-1960s, Reusse was also a 20-year panelist on “The Sports Show,” which aired on WUCW-TV, Fox Sports North, and Victory Sports One. Other panelists included Hartman, Mike Max, and George Chappel, better known by his nickname Dark Star. Books: · “Tales from the Minnesota Sports Beat: A Lifetime on Deadline.” - Co-authored with Chip Scoggins. Dan Barreiro (foreword). · “Tony Oliva: The Life and Times of a Minnesota Twins Legend” – by Thom Henninger. Reusse (foreword). · “Minnesota Vikings: The Complete Illustrated History” – by Reusse. Amy Klobuchar (afterword) · “Sid! The Sports Legends, the Inside Scoops, and the Close Personal Friends” – co-authored with Sid Hartman · “Minnesota Twins: The Complete Illustrated History” – co-authored with Dennis Brackin and Harmon Killebrew · “Minnesota Sports Almanac” – by Joel A. Rippel. Reusse (foreword). · “Michael Jordan Super Sports Stars Series (Stars of the Court series)” – by Reusse Follow him on Twitter: @Patrick_Reusse
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This is part 1 of a rollicking two-part conversation with Patrick Reusse, longtime sports columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and a member of the Minnesota Broadcasting Hall of Fame. Reusse looks back at his 60 years covering Minnesota sports in his engaging, irreverent, and self-deprecating style. In this first episode, he recalls Glen Sonmor’s hockey goons, offers his classic explanation to Vikings general manager Mike Lynn about his philosophy for covering the team, and tells us how the idea for his Turkey of the Year Awards column originated and grew into a much-anticipated Thanksgiving tradition. Patrick provides some humorous tales, as well as a poignant moment with Gene Mauch, from his years as a baseball beat writer covering the Twins. Reusse also goes deep into his complicated relationship with Sid Hartman, another Minnesota media legend who was still working at age 100 when he died in 2020. Reusse, 77, is senior columnist for the Star Tribune and is also the host of two popular podcasts: "Reusse Unchained" and "Monday Night Sports Talk with Patrick Reusse and Joe Soucheray." Patrick’s newspaper career started in 1963 as a copyboy for the Minneapolis Morning Tribune. Two years later, he began writing for the Duluth News-Tribune and Herald, then quickly moved to the St. Cloud Times. In 1968, Reusse joined the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where he went on to cover the Twins from 1974-78 before serving as that paper’s sports columnist for nine years, beginning in 1979. He moved to the Star Tribune in 1988 as sports columnist. The native of Fulda, Minnesota also became a fixture in Twin Cities talk radio and television. He was inducted into the Minnesota Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2019. Patrick has done radio and podcast work with KSTP-1500 since 1980, when he partnered with Soucheray on “Sunday Night Sports Talk.” They shared the airwaves together or independently on “Sports Talk” in various forms nearly every year since. Patrick also hosted “Reusse & Company” for that station (2009-10) and co-hosted “Reusse & Mackey” with Phil Mackey from 2010-14. His show “The Ride with Reusse” appeared weekdays from 2014 until September 2018. Reusse began his radio career at KFAM-AM in St. Cloud in the mid-1960s, Reusse was also a 20-year panelist on “The Sports Show,” which aired on WUCW-TV, Fox Sports North, and Victory Sports One. Other panelists included Hartman, Mike Max, and George Chappel, better known by his nickname Dark Star. Books: · “Tales from the Minnesota Sports Beat: A Lifetime on Deadline.” - Co-authored with Chip Scoggins. Dan Barreiro (foreword). · “Tony Oliva: The Life and Times of a Minnesota Twins Legend” – by Thom Henninger. Reusse (foreword). · “Minnesota Vikings: The Complete Illustrated History” – by Reusse. Amy Klobuchar (afterword) · “Sid! The Sports Legends, the Inside Scoops, and the Close Personal Friends” – co-authored with Sid Hartman · “Minnesota Twins: The Complete Illustrated History” – co-authored with Dennis Brackin and Harmon Killebrew · “Minnesota Sports Almanac” – by Joel A. Rippel. Reusse (foreword). · “Michael Jordan Super Sports Stars Series (Stars of the Court series)” – by Reusse Follow him on Twitter: @Patrick_Reusse
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Liz Clarke looks back on her “accidental career” as a sportswriter with the same thoughtfulness she always put into her stellar work. Much of our conversation focuses on NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt. Hear how she gained his trust in part by not being in awe of him, how his tough-guy exterior hid a soft heart, and how covering his death in the 2001 Daytona 500 shook Liz. She takes us along for “pinch-me moments” – such as the crowd’s emotional response to seeing Nelson Mandela at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa – from years of traveling the globe for The Washington Post. And we talk about the stress, the challenges, and the special camaraderie shared in a job that captured her heart amid sport’s wide range of emotions. Clarke retired in April 2023 after 37 years as a reporter, the last 25 of them at The Washington Post, where she focused on enterprise stories, the Olympics, college sports, auto racing, and tennis. She also spent eight seasons covering Washington's NFL team and the scandals surrounding team owner Dan Snyder. Liz covered nine Summer and Winter Olympics, three World Cups, multiple Super Bowls, NCAA Tournament Final Fours, more than a dozen Daytona 500s, a half-dozen Indianapolis 500s, Wimbledon, the French Open, and thoroughbred racing’s Preakness and Belmont Stakes. Before joining The Washington Post in 1998, Liz worked as a sportswriter at USA Today, the Dallas Morning News and The Charlotte Observer. She covered NASCAR for those three newspapers, and she is the author of the 2008 book, "One Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept the Nation." Liz was twice named National Motorsports Writer of the Year, in 1996 an ’98. Her other honors and awards include best sports feature in 2017 from the Society of Features Journalism, and best game story from the Associated Press Sports Editors in 2009. Clarke began her career as a news reporter for the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer, covering higher education. She earned a BA in history at Barnard College, Columbia University; and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduate studies in journalism.
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Thom Loverro says boxing has the best stories, and he shares some favorites from many years inside the fight game. He takes us to Muhammad Ali’s training camp, puts us ringside for Mike Tyson’s ear chomp, and takes us behind the scenes on the day Riddick Bowe defends his heavyweight title. Hear about Las Vegas, George Foreman’s power and preaching, and the wisdom of trainer Eddie Futch. Thom also shares moments from other sports he has covered, including memorable baseball highs and lows involving Cal Ripken Jr. and Roberto Alomar. In 2019, Loverro was honored with the Nat Fleischer Award for lifetime achievement in boxing journalism by the Boxing Writers Association of America. Three years earlier, he was inducted into the Washington, D.C. Boxing Hall of Fame. Thom has been featured on several HBO Legendary Nights programs and ESPN's Sports Classics about boxing. He has covered numerous world championship fights over the past three decades, as well as three Olympics, the World Series, the NFL, NBA, and NHL playoffs. In 2005, Thom was one of just three sportswriters to be invited to the Oval Office in The White House to interview President Bush about baseball. Loverro has won more than 40 national, regional, and local journalism awards, including an honor from the Associated Press Sports Editors association for his 2014 article in which he revealed, through the Freedom of Information Act, that the FBI believed the first Sonny Liston-Cassius Clay fight was fixed. Thom was voted Maryland Sportswriter of the Year in 2009 by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. His other honors include first place in the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and being named best sports columnist in the Virginia Press Association competition three times. Loverro’s journalism career began in 1977. After working for a couple of small newspapers in Pennsylvania, he a joined the Baltimore Sun in 1984. There, he spent eight years as a news editor and reporter, covering crime, politics, and government. Thom moved to sports in 1992 when The Washington Times hired him to cover the then-Redskins. A year later, he switched to baseball and served three seasons as the paper’s beat writer on the Baltimore Orioles. The Washington Examiner hired Thom as a sports columnist in 2009. Four years later, he returned to The Washington Times, where he remains the lead sports columnist. He is co-host of The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast. Check out past episodes of Loverro’s “Cigars & Curveballs” podcast, which featured guests such as Ripken; Foreman, Larry Holmes, Sugar Ray Leonard, Joe Theismann, Dusty Baker, and the creator of “The Wire,” David Simon. Loverro is the author of 11 books: · Washington Redskins: The Authorized History (1996) · Home of the Game: The Story of Camden Yards (1999) · Cammi Granato: Hockey Pioneer (2000) · The Quotable Coach (2002) · The Encyclopedia of Negro League Baseball (2003) · The John Mackey Story, Blazing Trails: Coming of Age in Football's Golden Era (2003) · Oriole Magic: The O's of '83 (2004) · Hail Victory: An Oral History of the Washington Redskins (2006) · The Rise and Fall of Extreme Championship Wrestling (2006) · Eagles Essential (2006) · Orioles Essential (2007) Loverro received a Bachelor of Science degree in Liberal Studies from the University of Scranton and a master's degree in Journalism and Public Affairs from American University in Washington. He has taught journalism courses at Georgetown University, Towson State University, and American University. Follow him on Twitter: @thomloverro
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Damon Hack reflects on his 16 years as a sportswriter and how those experiences informed his work in the past decade as a TV journalist at the Golf Channel. Learn protocol lessons taught by the San Francisco 49ers of Steve Young, Jerry Rice and Chris Doleman. Damon takes us to a Super Bowl party with Peyton and Eli Manning, into Adrian Peterson’s home, overseas for the Olympics, and into the mascot costume of Ricky the River Rat. Damon also discusses being a Black reporter covering the predominantly white world of golf for 20 years, and how Tiger Woods has impacted the sport’s diversity. And he shares his favorite Tiger moment, as well as his own score the first time he played golf. Hack has spent the past decade at the Golf Channel, where he’s co-host of “Golf Today.” He also works as an on-site reporter for the network’s live tournament coverage and for Golf Central at select PGA Tour tournaments. And he contributes to Golf Channel digital as a writer. Besides his responsibilities with NBC Sports Group’s Golf Channel, he covered biathlon events at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea for NBC. Damon joined the Golf Channel and NBC Sports Group in 2012 after covering the PGA Tour and the NFL for five years as a senior writer at Sports Illustrated. Prior to SI, he covered golf and pro football as a New York Times staff writer from 2002-07, and he covered golf and the New York Knicks as a beat reporter for Newsday (2000-02). Damon also previously covered the San Francisco 49s during his tenure at the Sacramento Bee (1996-2000). He was born in Los Angeles, earned a bachelor’s degree in history from UCLA and a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley. Damon and his wife, Suzanna Yip, have triplet sons. You can read Damon’s powerful column in response to the death of George Floyd that he wrote for golfchannel.com on June 1, 2020: https://www.golfchannel.com/news/damon-hack-can-i-be-both-thankful-and-horrified-can-i That column led to Damon giving a TEDx talk: “Reimaging Race in America.” You can watch it here: https://www.ted.com/talks/damon_hack_reimagining_race_in_america Read Damon’s articles in Sports Illustrated: https://www.si.com/author/damon-hack Read his New York Times articles: https://www.nytimes.com/by/damon-hack Follow him on Twitter: @damonhackGC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We surf waves, climb mountains, and dive into odorous media mixed zones with Elliott Almond. He has earned a reputation as one of the top Olympic writers and sports investigative reporters during his adventurous career of nearly 50 years. Elliott explains how Edwin Moses led him to break a major story about steroids before the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games. He recalls the bunker mentality needed to report on the tragic death of Hank Gathers. Why did Marion Jones talk to Elliott after a failed relay despite despising him? Hear about the craziness of writing about figure skating on deadline, how surfing with quarterback Todd Marinovich led to Elliott taking the Wonderlic test, and how climber Alex Honnold paused to provide a unique perspective. And there’s the time a Secret Service agent pointed a gun at Elliott when he was chasing Richard Nixon . . .
For nearly 50 years, Almond has been a sports journalist on the West Coast, noted for his enterprise work and Olympic coverage at the Los Angeles Times (1974-1996), the Seattle Times (1996-98), and the San Jose Mercury News (1998-2021). He has been recognized by such organizations as the Associated Press Sports Editors, Best American Sports Writing, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, and the Society of Professional Journalists. Elliott has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize three times. He is currently an outdoor columnist for the Cascadia Daily News in the Pacific Northwest. Elliott covered 14 Summer and Winter Olympics, as well as the 1999 and 2007 Pan American Games. His investigative work includes reporting on the BALCO drug scandal, steroids in international track and field, Gathers’ death, Magic Johnson and the issue of HIV, and cheating in college sports at Washington, USC, UCLA, and UNLV. He wrote about such diverse subjects as the Tour de France, social issues in sports such as abuse in women’s sports, crime in college and professional sports, and concussions and the consequences of traumatic brain injuries. A life-long surfer, Almond spent much of his youth traveling the Southern California and Baja California coastlines. He is the author of the book “Surfing: Mastering Waves from Basic to Intermediate.” From 2009-13, Elliott was an instructor for San Jose State University, where he served as an editor overseeing the production of a broadsheet newspaper by teenagers participating in a high school journalism workshop. Elliott graduated from California State-Fullerton in 1975 with bachelor’s degrees in communications and political science. He completed a master’s program, except for the dissertation, at California State-Long Beach. Follow him on Twitter: @ElliottAlmond Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
There’s much to unpack from Art Spander’s joyful journey of six decades as a sportswriter. The indefatigable Bay Area legend recalls the rise of young Tiger Woods and offers an intriguing theory. Art recounts covering iconic games such as The Catch, and The Miracle on Ice. He puts us at the Cal-Stanford game when “the band is on the field!” Art shares his love for major sporting events, especially the Rose Bowl. And he laughs about receiving a special delivery from Candlestick Park’s sod squad, and about being threatened by three athletes in a five-day span. Art explains how he ended up with Kyle Shanahan’s backpack and Super Bowl game plan. He takes us to training camp with the motley Oakland Raiders of the 1970s. Rules? What rules? Oh, and Art covered Marilyn Monroe’s funeral. What? Seriously. Hear about that and more. What a trip. Spander has been a fixture in the Bay Area sports scene since 1965, and he has practically lived at major sporting events. He attended or covered 67 consecutive Rose Bowls beginning in 1954 when he sold game programs. He has covered the Masters 55 times, including 54 in a row, and nearly every U.S. Open golf tournament since 1966. He has worked more than 40 Super Bowls, and more than 50 tennis Grand Slam events, including Wimbledon about 30 times. Art has covered more than 30 Final Fours, more than 30 British Opens, and the World Series nearly 20 times. He has also covered multiple Summer and Winter Olympics, the Ryder Cup, each of the Triple Crown thoroughbred races, the Indianapolis 500, nearly every Crosby/AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am for more than a half-century and every Cal-Stanford football game since 1968. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Take a trip around the world with Alexander Wolff, one of the most lyrical writers of his era. He shares some gems from chronicling basketball’s international growth during his 36 years at Sports Illustrated. We’re in a car with him, Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra at 3 a.m. We tag along to remote Asia where royalty wasn’t keen on man-to-man D. We hear about Jerry Tarkanian making an offer that Alex refused. Go to Tobacco Road and learn the differences between Dean Smith and Mike Krzyzewski. Alex recounts the college version of Michael Jordan, and how MJ helped spread hoops around the planet. We also talk a little football as Alex explains the backstory of his open letter to The U and its blowback from outraged Miami fans. The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame recognized Wolff with its 2011 Curt Gowdy Media Award for lifetime contributions to the game as a print journalist. Alex joined Sports Illustrated as a researcher in September 1980 after earning a bachelor’s degree in history with honors from Princeton, where he had served as a freelance writer for the Trenton Times. Wolff became a writer at SI in 1982, at age 25, and the magazine named him a senior writer in 1985. Besides basketball, Wolff also covered the Olympics, the World Cup, the World Series, every Grand Slam tennis event, and the Tour de France before leaving Sports Illustrated and SI.com in 2016 as the longest-tenured writer on staff. He reported from China, Cuba, Russia and Iran, and often wrote about issues where and sports and society intersect. Wolff’s work has been anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing, Best Sports Stories, Sports Illustrated’s Fifty Years of Great Writing, and The Princeton Anthology of Writing. In 1996, Alex collaborated with Hoop Dreams filmmakers Peter Gilbert and Steve James to make Team of Broken Dreams, which detailed the impact of the Yugoslav crisis on basketball players from the Balkans. The documentary, based on one of Wolff’s Sports Illustrated articles and broadcast on NBC, was nominated for an Emmy and won the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Media Award. When he served as president of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, Wolff helped found the USBWA’s Full Court Press journalism scholarship and seminar program. He is the former owner of the now defunct Vermont Frost Heaves, which won American Basketball Association championships in 2007 and 2008. Wolff is the author or co-author of seven books about basketball:
Wolf also edited and introduced a collection of basketball writing for the Library of America in 2018 called “Basketball: Great Writing about America’s Game.” “Endpaper: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home” is Wolff’s latest book, published in 2021. He explores the lives of his grandfather and father, who were both born in Germany and later became American citizens. Check out Alex’s website: https://alexanderwolff.com/ Read articles that Alex wrote for Sports Illustrated: https://alexanderwolff.com/stories-for-sports-illustrated/ Follow him on Twitter: @alexander_wolff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
David Steele recounts the many twists and turns in his nearly four decades as a sportswriter. He takes us to Maryland in 1986 when the death of Len Bias shook the sports world. Go into the Garden on the night Anthony Mason sat in the upper deck during a Knicks game while he was suspended. Hear how David got the first print interview with Latrell Sprewell after the player choked his coach P.J. Carlesimo. David tells us about the greatest moment he ever covered: Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals when Michael Jordan made his final shot with the Chicago Bulls. And we discuss David’s latest book, “It Was Always a Choice: Picking Up the Baton of Athlete Activism,” which chronicles the long tradition of athletes speaking out against racism, injustice, and oppression. During his 36 years in sports journalism, David has covered the Olympics, the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, NCAA Final Four, and the playoffs in every major professional and college sport. He has worked for the Sporting News (2011-19), AOL FanHouse (2009-11), the Baltimore Sun, (2004-09) the San Francisco Chronicle (1995-2004), Newsday (1992-95), the New York Post (1988-89), The National Sports Daily (1989-91), and the St. Petersburg Times (1986-88). David was a sports columnist in Baltimore and San Francisco, and prior to that he spent 11 years covering the NBA as a beat reporter in New York and the Bay Area. He covered the NFL and Major League Baseball for the Sporting News and was an NFL beat reporter in St. Petersburg. He has also written for ESPN’s The Undefeated, the Washington City Paper, the NAACP’s The Crisis and several other publications. While he college, David worked internships at the Washington Post, Newsday, and the Raleigh News and Observer. He is currently writing for Law360.com after a brief stint at Inside Higher Ed.
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Bill Koch knows Cincinnati sports as well as any journalist after covering his hometown for more than 40 years. He goes deep into his story vault about Hall of Fame coach Bob Huggins, the subject of Bill’s new book. Hear about the time they played each other in basketball, what Huggins was like to cover as a daily beat reporter, and why players have such strong allegiance to their former coach. Oh, and Bill tells the classic DMFHF story. He recalls chronicling University of Cincinnati moments such as the 1992 Final Four, Kenyon Martin’s broken leg, and the No Handshake Game against Xavier. Bill also recounts being outside the courthouse in Los Angeles when the O.J. Simpson verdict came down, talking hair (or lack of) with Andre Agassi, and interviewing the reclusive Sandy Koufax one-on-one. Hear about a good screaming match between writers on the night that Pete Rose set baseball’s record for career hits. Scribe battles are the best. And there’s the time Marty Brennaman had a question for Bill the young reporter. Koch is the author of five books, the latest out now: “Huggs: Former Players Talk About What it was Like to Play for Hall of Fame Coach Bob Huggins.” Bill covered five Final Fours, two World Series, five baseball All-Star Games, a Super Bowl and the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. He worked at the Cincinnati Post from 1978 to 2001 and served as sports columnist for nearly his last five years there. Bill worked for the Cincinnati Enquirer from 2002 until Dec. 26, 2014, and then wrote for the University of Cincinnati’s sports website for five years until retiring in 2019. His journalism career began in 1976 with stops at the Chillicothe Gazette and at Cincinnati’s Community Press before spending three-plus decades – including 23 years as UC beat reporter on football and basketball – at the Queen City’s two main newspapers. You can follow Bill on Twitter: @bkoch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Our 40th guest on Press Box Access is the esteemed Mark Whicker, one of my all-time favorite writers and people in the sports media business. He takes us on a winding road through his career of nearly five decades. We’re in locker rooms with Julius Erving, Darryl Dawkins, Pete Rose and Tug McGraw. There are late nights with a baseball GM known as “The Pope,” fan fights at The Vet, and police horses on a World Series field. Mark puts in the Forum Club for the jammed press conference when Magic Johnson announced he had HIV. He recounts a special column about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the fans’ roar that carried Cathy Freeman to a gold medal, and what it was like at the 2001 World Series in New York weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Hear why Mark thinks David Thompson was the most important basketball player in ACC history, what it was like to witness meltdowns by Jean van de Velde and Greg Norman, and how there was menace in the Miami air on the night Aaron Pryor fought Alexis Arguello. And much more. Whicker spent the bulk of his 48 years as a sportswriter and award-winning columnist in southern California and Philadelphia. The Associated Press Sports Editors twice voted him a top 10 columnists in the nation, and he won three state Sportswriter of the Year awards. Mark received the 2014 Nat Fleischer Award, presented by the Boxing Writers Association of America for his distinguished coverage of many of the marquee fights since the late 1970s. In 2020, he was named to the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame. Mark graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1973. He lives in Long Beach, Ca., with his wife, Robyn Norwood – a former sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times (1986 to 2008) and son.
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Jerry Tipton knows where all the bones are buried when it comes to University of Kentucky basketball after covering the Wildcats for 41 years. The Hall of Fame writer takes us courtside for the Dream Game with Louisville in 1983 and the legendary Duke game (uh, Laettner) in ‘92. He tells what season stands out more than any other and why, and what he admired about Cawood Ledford as an announcer. Hear how Rick Pitino handled the spotlight, what made Jamal Mashburn a special player, and why a healthy Sam Bowie lingers in memory. Jerry reveals the nickname Joe Hall gave him and recounts their philosophical discussion about the eternal fate of sportwriters. And he explains the expectations of Kentucky fans, how he coped with the relentless beat, and what bowling – yes, bowling – taught him about journalism. Tipton served as the Kentucky basketball beat reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader from 1981 until his retirement in July 2022. In that time, he covered three national championship teams (’96, ’98, ’12), nine Final Four teams, six head coaches -- Joe Hall, Eddie Sutton, Rick Pitino, Tubby Smith, Billy Gillispie, John Calipari – and more than 1,200 games played by the Wildcats. He also covered the university’s football team for six years before turning exclusively to basketball in 1987. A Lexington website once listed the Top 100 Most Influential People in University of Kentucky Sports History and ranked Tipton at No. 74. He has been enshrined in the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, and the Marshall University School of Journalism and Mass Communication Hall of Fame. He was the 2018 winner of the Tom Hammond Kentucky Sports Media Award. Mike Johnson, former Herald-Leader sports editor who hired Tipton, told that paper: “I spent 46 years in the news business. Jerry is simply the best beat reporter I’ve ever seen. Not sports reporter, beat reporter.” Tipton also worked eight years for the Huntington (W.Va.) Herald-Dispatch from 1973-81. There, he was the beat reporter on Marshall University basketball for two seasons, covered Ohio and West Virginia high school sports, and wrote a Sunday column about bowling. The native of Hamtramck, Michigan earned a journalism degree from Marshall University after first studying math in college. Tipton was a sophomore when the Marshall plane crash killed much of the Thundering Herd football team, as memorialized in the movie “We Are Marshall.” Jerry didn’t learn that his roommate, a manager for the team, was alive until three days later. “Jerry Tipton has been synonymous with Kentucky basketball for 40 years and that should be applauded,” John Calipari told the Herald-Leader. “He’s never been afraid to ask tough questions, even when I might not have liked it. But his dedication to the Lexington community and unwavering work ethic has resulted in a Hall of Fame career. I wish him nothing but the best in his retirement.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Melissa Isaacson takes us into old Chicago Stadium, where smoke rose to the ceiling while Michael Jordan soared into history. She recounts chronicling the 1990s dynasty of the Bulls, with its crazy circus, gracious characters, and poignant moments. Hear about her visit to Birmingham, Ala. when Jordan was playing minor league baseball and mourning his father’s murder. Oh, and there was that time Phil Jackson walked in on a simulation of childbirth involving a basketball. Melissa also recalls sitting by Princess Diana at Wimbledon, visiting the athletes’ Olympic village, and navigating the early days of her career when there were few women working in the sports media. Isaacson was an award-winning sports journalist for 34 years, including 19 at the Chicago Tribune, where she was the paper’s first female beat writer on the Bulls (1991-95) and Bears (1995-2001). She initially covered University of Illinois men’s basketball (1990) and later became the Tribune’s first female sports columnist and a feature writer before leaving that paper for ESPN in 2009.
Throughout her career, Isaacson received Associated Press Sports Editors awards for beat writing, investigative and feature reporting. She covered the Summer and Winter Olympics, more than a dozen Super Bowls, the NBA Finals, World Series, the Stanley Cup Playoffs, Final Fours, Wimbledon and U.S. Open tennis, the British Open, and college bowl games. Isaacson was a columnist for ESPNChicago.com from 2009-2012; for ESPNW.com on professional tennis, golf and general sports from 2013-15; and ESPN.com covering the Olympics, tennis, golf, Special Olympics and general sports from 2015-17. She also covered sports for the Orlando Sentinel (1986-90), USA Today (1985-86), and Florida Today (1983-85). Follow her on Twitter: @mkisaacson You can visit Melissa’s website: http://www.melissaisaacson.com/ Her bio at Northwestern: https://www.medill.northwestern.edu/directory/faculty/melissa-isaacson.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Take a spin around the Cleveland sports scene with Bud Shaw, who spent nearly 27 years there as a columnist with a keen and irreverent eye. Bud puts us with the 1997 Indians when they had World Series champagne on ice. Oops. He recounts a confrontation with glowering Albert Belle, which prompted sage advice from ready-for-battle baseball scribe Paul Hoynes. And Bud recalls covering the tragic boating accident that killed pitchers Tim Crews and Steve Olin. We also hear about a young LeBron James, the same old, same old Browns, and tales from Bud’s media years before arriving in northeast Ohio. Those days include a prison visit with Denny McLain and Motoball in Moscow. Yes, Motoball. What? Shaw was a sports columnist for The Plain Dealer, and later Cleveland.com, from 1991 until he accepted a voluntary buyout in 2018. He then worked for WKYC.com in Cleveland that year before retiring. He won numerous Associated Press Sports Editor awards, including a top 10 in column writing, during his career. His story about the 1993 deaths of Crews and Olin received an honorable mention selection in the “Best American Sportswriting” series. Bud covered more than a dozen Super Bowls and World Series, six Olympic Games, eight Masters, the PGA and U.S. Open golf championships, the Ryder Cup, five Indianapolis 500s, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup Finals, the Daytona 500, the Final Four, and the U.S. Open tennis tournament. Before coming to Cleveland, Bud worked as bureau chief and columnist in Chicago and Detroit for The National Sports Daily from 1989-91. His career also included reporting stints at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (1984-89), the San Diego Union-Tribune (1982-84), the Philadelphia Daily News (1980-82), the Trenton (N.J.) Times (1978-80), the Johnstown (Pa.) Tribune Democrat (1977-78), and the Kittanning (Pa.) Leader Times (1976-77). The native of Philadelphia graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a journalism degree in 1976. Follow Bud on Twitter: @budshaw Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tony Barnhart takes us on a trip through some of his favorite memories covering college football for more than four decades. Mr. College Football tells us about Herschel Walker, Bo Jackson, Tim Tebow, and other legendary players. He shares insight about coaches Steve Spurrier and Vince Dooley. Tony examines how SEC expansion in the early 1990s led to today’s conference realignment. He recalls the greatest game he ever covered: Texas over USC for the BCS Championship in the Rose Bowl. Hear some college hoops history, too, as Tony recounts North Carolina State’s upset of Phi Slama Jama. Barnhart will be covering his 46th season of college football in 2022 for newspapers, TV, radio and the internet. He has been with the SEC Network since its launch in 2014, writing columns for SECSports.com and contributing to the network’s studio programming. Tony became known as Mr. College Football during his 25-year tenure at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from 1984 to 2008. He was the Georgia beat reporter for two years before becoming the paper’s college sports editor in July ’87. Twice a week, he hosted a TV show “Talking Football” from Atlanta on the regional cable network Comcast Sports Southeast. While serving as the Journal-Constitution’s national college football writer, Tony began contributing to ESPN’s coverage of the sport beginning in 1993. He started appearing as a regional beat reporter for that network’s “Halftime Blitz,” and began appearing on “College GameDay” in the ’97 season. Tony joined the CBS Sports’ “College Football Today” in 2004 and regularly contributed to that show until 2013. His career began when he took as job as sports editor at The Union Daily Times in South Carolina days after graduating with a degree in journalism from the University of Georgia in 1976. He then covered ACC football and basketball for eight years at the Greensboro News & Record before moving to Atlanta. He has covered 33 national football championships and 23 Final Fours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dan Wetzel takes us into the gray netherworld of sports, where some writers aren’t willing to tread. We discuss how his experiences covering college basketball and AAU taught him to look beyond cliches. Hear about characters such as Sonny Vaccaro, Jerry Tarkanian and others who were easily cast into roles for a simple narrative. Dan puts us in the media room when John Chaney threatened to kill John Calipari. And the Yahoo Sports national columnist describes the tensions and emotions that existed in the court rooms when he covered the trials of Aaron Hernandez and Larry Nassar. Wetzel is the author of these books: · “Sole Influence: Basketball, Corporate Greed and the Corruption of America's Youth” with Don Yaeger of Sports Illustrated · “Glory Road” with former University of Texas-El Paso basketball coach Don Haskins · “Runnin' Rebel: Shark Tales of ‘Extra Benefits,’ Frank Sinatra, and Winning It All” with former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian. · “Resilience: Faith, Focus, Triumph” with Alonso Mourning · “Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series” with Josh Peter and Jeff Passan And he has written several sports biographies for children as part of the Epic Athletes series : · Stephen Curry · Alex Morgan · Serena Williams · Tom Brady · LeBron James · Lionel Messi · Simone Biles · Kevin Durant · Patrick Mahomes · Zion Williamson Follow him on Twitter (@DanWetzel) and Instagram (wetzelsports). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Few sportswriters can match the lyrical and insightful work of Dave Kindred. His aim has always been to take readers with him, and make them feel what he felt. Dave does this for listeners in this episode as he recalls first meeting Muhammad Ali in 1966, covering 17 of his fights, and agreeing to a strange request from The Greatest in one of their 300-plus interviews. There was the time Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp called Kindred a SOB, and that magical moment at the ’73 Belmont Stakes when Secretariat ran like a beautiful machine in motion. He compares and contrasts Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus, and reveals who he’d take if they were matched in their prime. And we hear how Dave found a community in the past decade by chronicling a girls high school basketball team in Illinois. Kindred forged a close relationship with Ali while working as a staff writer and columnist for the heavyweight champion’s hometown newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, from 1965 to ’77. He went on to serve as sports columnist for The Washington Post (1977-84), the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (1984-89 and 1995-97), The National Sports Daily (1989-91), and the Sporting News (1991-2007). Dave has been a contributing writer for Golf Digest since 1997, and he’s a regular contributor online for the National Sports Journalism Center. He also wrote a news column for several years while at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and he was the Washington D.C. correspondent for the Courier-Journal. Dave’s started as a sportswriter in 1959 at The Daily Pantagraph in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, while he was a student earning a B.A. in English at Illinois Wesleyan ‘63. He worked there for six years before moving to Kentucky. He went on to write more than 7,000 columns and 12 books, including the memoir, “Leave Out the Tragic Parts: A Grandfather’s Search for a Boy Lost to Addiction,” that was published in 2021. By his count, Dave has covered 75 major golf championships dating back to the 1966 PGA Championship. He also covered 44 Super Bowls, 43 Kentucky Derby races; 44 World Series, eight Olympic Games (Winter and Summer) and eight Wimbledon Championships, and three NBA Finals, He was in Munich, Germany for the ’72 Olympic massacre and in Lake Placid, N.Y. for the 1980 Miracle on Ice. And he likes to say that he’s lost golf balls in 22 countries on four continents. Kindred’s six-decade career – including how he has written in retirement about the Morton High School girls basketball team in recent years – was featured in a segment of 60 Minutes that aired March 28, 2021 on CBS. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dave-kindred-local-sportswriter-60-minutes-2021-03-28/ His books include: · “Morning Miracle: Inside the Washington Post: A Great Newspaper Fights for Its Life” · “Sound and Fury: A Dual Biography of Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell” · “Around the World in 18 Holes with Tom Callahan” · “Basketball: The Dream Game in Kentucky” · “Theismann” · “The Kentucky Derby: A Great American Tradition” · “Glove Stories” · “Heroes, Fools & Other Dreamers” You can follow him on Twitter: @DaveKindred Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Johnette Howard has never been afraid to stand her ground while reporting and writing about sports for four decades. Hear what she told Bill Laimbeer and Kirby Puckett when they challenged her early in her career. Howard has also always followed her curiosity, which has led her to craft award-winning stories and best-selling books. She tells us about hockey goons, the Bad Boy Pistons, and dramatic Olympic moments that remain seared in her memory. She also takes us to Centre Court at Wimbledon, and through the years with Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova – a rivalry unparalleled in sports. We finish by going from tennis to beyond with Howard as she recounts how Billie Jean King impacted sports and life for women everywhere. Howard worked as a columnist and on-air commentator for ESPN.com (2008-17), a general sports columnist for Newsday (1999-2009), and a columnist and enterprise writer for The Washington Post (1993-94). She was a senior writer for The National Sports Daily (1989-91) and Sports Illustrated (1994-98) after beginning her career at the Detroit Free Press (1982-89 and 1991-93) as an NBA and Olympics writer. Her long-form articles have been collected in nine anthologies, including “Best American Sports Writing of the 20th Century,” Sports Illustrated’s “Great Football Writing,” and “A Kind of Grace: A Treasury of Sports Writing by Women.” Her newspaper columns for Newsday were nominated for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in general commentary. Besides ESPN, she has also frequently appeared on radio and television for NPR, CNN, HBO, FOX, BBC TV, and Spike TV. She has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Athletic, Slate, The Times of London, House & Garden, Architectural Digest, and Golf for Women. Howard collaborated with Billie Jean King on King's autobiography, "All in", which was released in August 2021 and debuted at No. 5 on The New York Times Best-Seller List. The Christian Science Monitor called “All In” the best sports book of the year, and The Washington Post named it one of the 50 notable non-fiction books of 2021. She is also author of the book “The Rivals: Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, Their Epic Duels and Extraordinary Friendship,” which was published in 2005. Howard has won national and local recognition from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Best American Sports Writing (five times), the Women’s Sports Foundation, the New York Headline Club, Long Island Press Association. Howard’s account on Twitter: @JohnetteHoward Her website: www.johnettehoward.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Vito Stellino has been writing about the NFL since the players needed off-season jobs to make a living. He covered the gambling suspensions of stars Alex Karras and Paul Hornung – in 1963. Hear about that and much more as Vito takes us on a ride through the past 60 years of pro football’s growth. The Hall of Fame writer witnessed the moving trucks depart on that snowy night in ’84 when the Colts fled Baltimore for Indianapolis. Vito puts us there. He also takes us behind the scenes with the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers and explains how one of the NFL’s greatest teams was impacted by the work of the too-often forgotten Bill Nunn. Oh, and besides football, Vito was also ringside for Ali-Frazier I, as well as courtside for Texas Western’s historic ’66 NCAA championship win. He has details. Join us. Stellino’s distinguished career in sports journalism began in 1963 as a United Press International reporter in Detroit, where he covered the Lions. After a two-year stint in the Army, he rejoined the UPI wire service in New York before moving to newspapers in Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Jacksonville. The majority of Stellino’s career was spent covering in the NFL, and his work earned him the Dick McCann Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1989. At one point, Vito covered 40 consecutive Super Bowls. His first was in January 1973 when the Miami Dolphins capped their undefeated season. Vito was a beat reporter covering the iconic Steelers of the 1970s when Pittsburgh won four Super Bowl titles in six years. He later covered two of the Washington teams that won Super Bowls under Joe Gibbs. Before the NFL became a year-round beat, Vito reported on six World Series, the first Ali-Frazier fight, NBA and NHL games (including Gordie Howe’s record-breaking goal in 1963), PGA tournaments and tennis. Stellino is still writing about the NFL, as well as other sports topics on his personal blog “Vito’s Views” at https://vitostellino.com/ . You can follow him @vitostellino on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jarrett Bell has been writing about the NFL since 1981, including the past 29 years as a national columnist for USA Today. He learned long ago that you get the scoop by getting to know the people. Bell discusses some of the more memorable owners, coaches and players he has encountered in four decades. He takes us behind the scenes as two iconic franchises, the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers, transitioned in the late 80s and early 90s. Hear tales of Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson, Joe Montana and Steve Young. Go on a home visit with Jerry Jones. Be there when Eddie DeBartolo vows that heads will roll. And go to dinner with Bruce Smith on Bell’s tab. More NFL stories, and to think they all came because Bell’s first love was . . . hockey? Bell has covered pro football for USA Today as an NFL columnist since 1993. He previously served as a contributor at ESPN for four years (2013-2017), primarily featured as a panelist on “NFL Insiders” and “SportsCenter.” Since 1997, Bell has been a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee while also serving on the media panel that selects the Super Bowl MVP. He participated on a blue-ribbon panel that selected the NFL’s Centennial Team. Among hundreds of radio and TV interviews, he has appeared on programming for CBS (Face The Nation), NBC (Nightly News), ESPN, CNN, Fox Sports 1, NFL Films, The NFL Network, CNBC, MSNBC, Headline News, Comcast, ESPN Radio, NBC Sports Radio, ABC Radio, Rogers Sportsnet, Sirius Satellite Radio, Pro Football Talk and WUSA-TV. In 2020, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) honored Bell with a Salute to Excellence Award. That same year, he won first-place honor for projects in Associated Press Sports Editors writing contest. Bell has won three writing awards from The Pro Football Writers of America: game analysis and breaking news in 2009, and breaking news in 2001. He’s won dozens of in-house awards from Gannett, owner of USA Today. He also was cited for an Outstanding Book Award from NABJ for “Resilient by Nature,” on which he collaborated on the memoir for former NFL linebacker Reggie Williams. Bell was featured prominently in two documentaries, “The Forgotten Four” and “Minister of Defense: The Reggie White Story.” He had a cameo role in the feature film, “Invincible.” For nearly 20 years, he was a regular “NFL Insider” guest on the Baltimore Ravens pregame show (2001-2018) on WBAL Radio. Prior to joining USA Today, Bell covered San Francisco 49ers as a beat reporter for the for The Marin (County) Independent Journal (1990-1992). He was editor of The Dallas Cowboys Weekly in 1989 after working four years in the team’s publications department. Bell was sports director for Fort Worth-based KNOK-FM (1984-1985) and covered high school sports as a staff writer for The Dallas Times Herald (1981-1983) while also serving as a contributing writer for the Cowboys Weekly, which he joined shortly after graduating from Michigan State University in ‘81 with a bachelor’s degree in Human Communication. Bell serves on the Alumni Advisory Board for the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State. In college, he worked as a student assistant in the Michigan State University Sports Information Office, a news reporter for WVIC-AM and as a teaching assistant for the Department of Communication. He also studied abroad at The University of London during the summer of 1979, participating in The Guardian’s Contemporary Mass Media program. The Detroit native’s career in sports began as a teenager when he was equipment manager for the Detroit Jr. Wings and as an aide in the public relations department for the NHL's Detroit Red Wings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Malcolm Moran spent more than 30 years writing sports for Newsday, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and USA Today. Yet he feared his career had ended early while covering the New York Yankees of George, Billy and Reggie. Hear why. He shares stories about Lou Holtz, quipster extraordinaire as Notre Dame football coach. He takes us to the NCAA tournament as the event’s popularity soared in the ’80s. Find out what Jack Youngblood had in his pickup truck at a Super Bowl practice. And tag along with Malcolm and Bob Knight in 1981 when the Indiana basketball coach visited his player, Landon Turner, who had been paralyzed in an auto accident. During his distinguished career, Malcolm Moran has covered 40 NCAA Final Fours, 11 Super Bowls, 16 World Series, four Olympic Games, the 2002 World Basketball Championships, and more than 30 post-season college football games with national championship stakes. His journalism career began at Newsday in 1977, where he covered high school, college and professional sports. He moved to The New York Times in 1979, where he worked as a reporter and columnist for 19 years until joining the Chicago Tribune 1998. There, he was the Notre Dame football beat reporter while also writing commentaries and providing event and feature coverage on pro and college sports. Malcolm moved to USA Today in 2000 to cover college basketball and football, as well as write feature articles on pro and college sports. Moran has been the Director of the Sports Capital Journalism Program at IUPUE in Indianapolis since 2013. The center serves as a comprehensive institute for the study of sports journalism, and it is the official partner of the Associated Press Sports Editors and the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. He’s also a professor of practice in journalism. He has directed IUPUE students in their coverage of the Bowl Championship Series, College Football Playoff, NCAA Final Four, World Baseball Classic, NFL Scouting Combine, Indianapolis 500 and the Olympic Games at Rio de Janeiro. Moran left newspaper work in 2006 to become the inaugural Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society in the College of Communications at Penn State. There, he directed the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism until 2013, when he left for IUPUE. He took Penn State students to the Final Four, the BCS National Championship game and the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Moran, a 1975 graduate of Fordham University, speaks annually to the Sports Journalism Institute. He has hosted the Associated Press Sports Editors' Diversity Fellows program and continues to organize the USBWA's Full Court Press seminar at the Final Four. He has made presentations to the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics, the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association, the Associated Press Sports Editors, the Sports Management Institute, CoSIDA, and several major universities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
My motto: Any time spent with Vahe Gregorian is time well spent. You’ll enjoy this hour with the sports columnist for The Kansas City Star as he shares highlights from his 35-year career. He puts us courtside in historic Allen Fieldhouse for the rivalry between Kansas and Missouri. He takes us to the Dominican Republic for the funeral of Royals pitcher Yordano Ventura. Go with Vahe to the home of Chicago Bears Hall of Fame running back Gale Sayers, who was battling dementia before his death. Head to Australia where Vahe went behind the scenes of an agonizing Olympic loss. Spend time with Tom Watson and George Brett, icons of Kansas City. Hear how that city was galvanized in the past decade by the Royals and Chiefs winning championships. And we give a special nod to Vahe’s late father, Vartan Gregorian. Vahe Gregorian will be one of five journalists enshrined in the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame this weekend at the Final Four in New Orleans. In 2017-18, he was president of the USBWA, which described him as “the ultimate teammate among his colleagues and a role model among his peers.” Gregorian has been sports columnist for The Kansas City Star since 2013 after spending 25 years covering a variety of sports for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He has covered 10 Olympics, three World Series, a Super Bowl, 22 Final Fours and multiple college football bowl games since the late 1980s. In 2017, the Associated Press Sports Editors named Vahe the national winner for column writing for large market newspapers. He earned another top 10 columnist award from the APSE in 2016, and his work was also recognized as part of a reporting team that was named one of the top 10 projects for that year. He was a Pulitzer Prize nominee in 2000, won several Football Writers Association of America awards, and has been named Missouri Sports Writer of the Year multiple times. His work has been published in “The Best American Sports Writing.” He has published two books: one about former Northwestern football coach Gary Barnett, and the other about former Michigan State football coach George Perles. Gregorian was born in Beirut, Lebanon and raised in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He played varsity football at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1983 with a degree in English. He earned his master’s degree in journalism at Missouri in ‘88. In 2004, he was chosen as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, where he focused on history and the demise of sportsmanship. Follow Vahe Gregorian on Twitter: @vgregorian Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ron Higgins sure can spin a yarn, and he shares some side-splitting ones from his more than four decades of covering sports in the Deep South. Hear how Bear Bryant responded to Ron asking him to roll his Tide team off the field. Hang out with Steve Spurrier, Dale Brown and other characters who added spice to the gig. Hear about the wizardry of “Pistol “Pete Maravich, about Luc Longley’s strange request at the Olympics, and why Alvin Lee’s sneakers snapped a slump. Oh, and learn what a basketball-loving surgeon once ask Ron on the operating table moments before a certain procedure. Good lawd. Higgins has worked at newspapers in four southern states while covering the SEC and national sporting events for 41 years. He has covered more than 50 bowl games, three Olympics, multiple Final Fours, the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, and Daytona 500. He’s the winner of 180 national, regional, and state writing awards – including being named writer of the year in both Tennessee and Louisiana multiple times by the National Sportswriters and Broadcasters. Ron is a member of the Tennessee Sportswriters Hall of Fame, and he served as president of the Football Writers Association of America in 2008. Ron spent nearly 29 years at the Memphis Commercial Appeal (1984-2013) as lead college football writer and columnist focusing on the SEC. He’s also worked at the Clarion-Ledger in Mississippi (2018), the NOLA Media Group in New Orleans (2013-18), the Mobile Press Register in Alabama (1997-98), and The Advocate (1983-84) in his hometown of Baton Rouge, La., where he currently resides again. Since 2019, he’s been covering LSU sports as editor of Tiger Rag Magazine and columnist for TigerDetails.com. His father, Ace Higgins, was sports information director (1954-68) at LSU, where Ron earned his journalism degree after graduating in 1977 from Angelina College – where he played basketball – in Lufkin, Texas.
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Austin Murphy takes us on a whirlwind ride through his 33 years of writing for Sports Illustrated in the magazine’s halcyon days. Hear how hanging out with Warren Sapp ended in a $150 cab ride. Travel with Lance Armstrong through his reign and fall as cycling’s king. Go with swimsuit models to Necker Island, where a discussion with Heidi Klum turns to . . . the fall of the Berlin Wall. Austin also provides insight about how he reinvented himself after being let go by SI in 2017. He tells of taking the fight to the universe as an Amazon delivery driver before finding his way back to journalism as a newspaper reporter covering everything but sports. Murphy wrote thousands of articles for Sports Illustrated and its website, SI.com from 1984 until 2017. About 140 of his stories were featured on the magazine’s cover – once a status symbol in the world of sports. Austin covered 10 Super Bowls, eight Olympics, eight Tours de France, four Stanley Cup Finals, and a dozen college football national championship games. Oh, and he also covered the Calgary Stampede rodeo in Alberta, Canada. Some years for SI, he was on the road in the U.S. and Europe as many as 100 to 200 days a year. He interviewed Bono, Brad Pitt and five Presidents: Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. His journalism career began as a sports reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times in Pennsylvania and then the Chronicle in Batavia, Ill. near Chicago. Sports Illustrated hired Austin in ‘84 after he sent the magazine his humorous essay about how he disappointed his father by quitting the football team at Colgate University, where he earned a Bachler of Arts degree in English literature. Originally hired as a fact-checker, Austin quickly moved to the National Hockey League beat at SI. He eventually moved up the ranks to senior writer, primarily covering the NFL, college football and the Tour de France. In May 2017, Murphy lost his job at Sports Illustrated in a round of corporate downsizing by the magazine’s owner, Time Inc. He ended up delivering packages for Amazon – making $17 an hour – for five months in 2018 and ’19. Austin wrote about that experience at Amazon for The Atlantic, and the essay went viral. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/what-its-like-to-deliver-packages-for-amazon/578986/ That led to his current job as a general news reporter at Santa Rosa Press Democrat in California. Murphy is the author of three books: · “The Sweet Season: A Sportswriter Rediscovers Football, Family, and a Bit of Faith at Minnesota’s St. John’s University” · “How Tough Could It Be? The Trials and Errors of a Sportswriter Turned Stay-at-Home Dad” · Saturday Rules: A Season with the Trojans and Domers (and Gators and Buckeyes and Wolverines) Read more about his time working for Amazon in the Colgate Magazine: https://news.colgate.edu/magazine/2020/08/07/deliverance-a-laid-off-sportswriters-roundabout-route-to-reinvention/ Follow Austin on Twitter: @ausmurph88
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Hal McCoy is synonymous with the Cincinnati Reds. The Hall of Fame writer for the Dayton Daily News has been covering baseball’s oldest professional franchise since 1973. Hal tells about the egos, talent, and inner workings of the Big Red Machine. Learn why the great Sparky Anderson was fired, and how Vern Rapp learned his same fate. Hear about Pete Rose’s return to Cincinnati and his ultimate downfall. Hal explains why Joe Morgan quit talking to him, why Eric Davis was his all-time favorite player, and why Lou Piniella once forgot to fill out a lineup card. And Hal explains how a pep talk from Aaron Boone kept him writing after he lost nearly all his eyesight. You’ll feel like one of baseball’s great writers is taking you out to the old ballgame. McCoy was honored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002 as winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, which is awarded annually “for meritorious contributions to baseball writing.” He has covered more than 7,000 Major League Baseball games and chronicled the day-to-day news of three World Series championship teams (1975, ’76 and ’90) and nine Division winners. Hal has been chair of the Cincinnati chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America 22 times, and he served as the BBWAA national president in 1997. He has won 52 Ohio and national writing awards and was the first non-Cincinnati newspaper writer to be elected to the Cincinnati journalists Hall of Fame. Hal is a member of the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame, as well as the Irish-American Baseball Hall of Fame. Dayton honored him with a stone on the city’s Walk of Fame, and the press box at Dayton’s Howell Field is named after him. Hal officially retired after the 2009 season after making nearly ever road trip with the Reds for nearly four decades, but he has never stopped writing about the team. He still covers Cincinnati’s home games from the ballpark for “The Real McCoy” blog on the Dayton Daily News website and for HalMcCoy.com. His “Ask Hal” columns appear in the paper’s Sunday print edition. Hal writes about the Reds’ games from the road off television – and weighs in on other sports topics – for his “Observations from the Man Cave” column on his own website. Hal also covers University of Dayton basketball and football for PressProsMagazine.com. McCoy’s career began at the Dayton Journal Herald in 1964, two years after the Akron native graduated with honors from Kent State University’s School of Journalism. Hal played college baseball (first base) on a partial scholarship and was a teammate of Gene Michael, a future player and general manager for the New York Yankees. In 1966, Hal took a job at the Detroit Free Press to cover Michigan and Michigan State football, but he returned to Dayton in ’67 to work for the Daily News. His original beats were Dayton Flyers basketball and auto racing. He also covered the Cleveland Browns, the defunct NBA Cincinnati Royals, golf, the University of Miami (Ohio) and high schools. By the late 1960s, he was the paper’s backup Reds’ writer. In 1973, his editor asked him to choose a fulltime beat: Reds or Bengals. He picked baseball and has never left the game. Hal lives in Englewood, Ohio, with his wife, Nadine. Follow Hal on Twitter: @HalMcCoyHOF Make sure to check out his book: “The Real McCoy: My Half Century with the Cincinnati Reds.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We’re talking hockey and much more with Helene Elliott, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and one of the most respected writers in the business. She recounts how Wayne Gretzky set 61 NHL records and triggered a hockey boom in LA as an ambassador. She also has a funny tale about the Great One’s fear of flying. Helene tells us why the Stanley Cup is the most difficult trophy to win in sports, how great players rise to the occasion like Messier for the ‘94 Rangers, and what it was like covering the Miracle on Ice at the 1980 Olympics. And hear how Helene overcame barriers faced by female sportswriters to become the first female journalist honored by the Hall of Fame of a major professional sport. Oh, and she has a story about Lenny and Squiggy. Elliott has been writing for Los Angeles Times since 1989. She was a beat reporter for the Lakers and Angels, then spent many years covering hockey and Olympic sports before becoming a columnist in 2006. Helene has covered 17 Olympics, the Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals, Wimbledon, men’s and women’s World Cup soccer tournaments, and and nearly every Stanley Cup Finals since 1980. She became the first female journalist to be honored with a plaque in the Hall of Fame of a major professional sport in 2005 as winner of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Elmer Ferguson Award, given to writers “who have brought honor to journalism and to hockey.” She won the Best Breaking News Story award from the Associated Press Sports Editors for her story on the labor agreement that ended the NHL lockout in 2005. Her career began at the Chicago Sun-Times in 1977. She moved to New York City in 1979 and wrote for Newsday for the next 10 years before going to the West Coast. A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Elliott is a 1977 graduate of the Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, which inducted her into the Medill Hall of Achievement in 2020. Follow Elliott on Twitter: @helenenothelen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Rick Telander is curious by nature, and his drive to learn more through reporting and relationships has served readers well for five decades. He’s always dives deep on stories, and he takes us with him on this episode. Rick puts us in an NFL training camp, where getting cut as a player caused his writing career to bloom. We go with him to the heaven-like basketball playgrounds of New York City in the 1970s for his first book. We ride with Rick into the Wild West of college football in the ‘80s. He takes us behind the scenes with characters on the ferocious ’85 Bears. Hear about the childlike wonder and blazing inner-drive of the great Walter Payton. Rick also explains the mischievous and competitiveness of another Chicago icon – some guy named Michael Jordan, who could read any room like no one else. And Rick takes us from the heights of fame with Jordan to the tough west side of Chicago, where he chronicled how prep basketball players at Orr Academy must overcome much more than opponents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jerry Izenberg earned his first newspaper paycheck in 1951, and he’s still writing as columnist emeritus at The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey. “It has been an active life,” he says. Active? Try one of the most amazing careers in sports journalism. We’re lucky to hear from Jerry in this second of a two-part episode about his 70 years in the business. Part 1 was all about Muhammad Ali. Jerry told tales from covering more of his fights than anyone. In this second episode, we hear how Jerry became a sports columnist, and how he learned from Red Smith and Jimmy Cannon. He tells us about the first Super Bowl and Pete Rozelle. Hear about Mike Tyson crying on Jerry’s chest, and about the magnificent Pele’s message to the crowd after his final soccer match. You’ll laugh about the pigeons at Jerry’s first boxing title match and smile about how a horse from Venezuela captured his heart. And you’ll learn about the fortitude of Larry Doby, the baseball Hall of Famer who broke the American League color barrier and later developed a special relationship with Jerry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
If you want stories about Muhammad Ali, you go to Jerry Izenberg. We did, and now you’ll hear tales about Ali in this episode that you’ve probably never heard before. Izenberg’s career in sports media is so special we’re presenting a two-part episode with him. He’s 91 and still writing as columnist emeritus at the Newark Star-Ledger in New Jersey, where he was hired in 1951. We’ll cover his entire career in part 2, but this first episode with Izenberg is devoted entirely to his relationship with Ali. Jerry covered more of Ali’s fights than any sportswriter, dating to their first meeting at the 1960 Olympics in Rome. He takes us inside the vicious rivalry between Ali and Joe Frazier, including a ringside seat at their brutal Thrilla in Manila. Jerry gives us an inside look at the Rumble in the Jungle when Ali reclaimed his heavyweight championship with an upset of George Foreman in Zaire. He also puts us in Las Vegas on that sad night when Larry Holmes beat up his old friend. Hear this and much more about The Greatest from one of the greatest sportswriters ever. And don’t forget to join us for the upcoming part 2. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
For Bonnie Ford, being a sportswriter is about more than covering games and knowing statistics. She carved out a stellar career by acting on what she felt was a journalistic obligation: Digging into complicated social, cultural and financial topics related to sports. Bonnie did extensive work on doping scandals, especially in cycling, which made her an expert on the Tour de France and its superstar, Lance Armstrong. “I’m grateful that I had such a compelling figure for so much of my career to cover,” she says. Bonnie also discusses how she wrote about issues common to all athletes such as mental health. She shares how Olympic swimmer Allison Schmitt used her platform to talk about depression. She also tells us about covering the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, about profiling Art Modell as he moved the Browns from Cleveland, and what it was like at Wrigley Field after Steve Bartman tried to catch a foul ball. Bonnie was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford and a Fellow at the University of Maryland Knight Center for Specialized Journalism. She grew up in the New York City area, spent her high school years in Paris, France before earning a bachelor’s degree in 1979 from Oberlin College in Ohio. Bonnie is married to former Philadelphia Inquirer sports columnist Bob Ford, who retired in 2020 after 32 years at that paper. Stories from early in her career were written under her maiden name, Bonnie DeSimone. Follow her on Twitter: @Bonnie_D_Ford Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Details always caught the eye of Timothy Smith during his three decades as a sportswriter. Small moments often revealed bigger things about his subjects. Tim recounts how the discipline of Evander Holyfield fueled the fighter’s confidence and warrior mentality. Oh, and hear what Holyfield shared with Tim about why he knew he’d beat Mike Tyson. Tim tells us about experiencing the wild range of Tyson’s emotions, and what it was like to spend three hours with Muhammad Ali. The Champ levitated. Seriously. Hear what it was like in the Bahamas when Orlando Hernandez came ashore after El Duque fled Cuba. Eggs were involved. And let Tim tell you about the babysitting skills of Sam Wyche . . . and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hoops discusses how he fell in love with basketball, the Big 5 in Philadelphia, and that city’s famed arena, The Palestra. He takes us back to the Big East glory days of the 1980s, and we ride with him on the team plane of national champion Villanova after its upset of Georgetown. Hear about Kobe Bryant the teenage phenom, and how Magic and Bird changed college basketball as well as the NBA. Hoops recounts the season he spent with the fabled ’92 Kentucky team that fell in epic fashion to Duke. And he compares John Wooden and Mike Krzyzewski. Get a TO, baby, and listen up. This is a basketball treat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Bill Livingston’s goal as a writer was to put readers at the scene. Hear about the memorable places he took them, and characters they encountered, during his nearly 50 years of covering sports. Bear witness to the all-time basketball artistry of Julius Erving and LeBron James. Sit courtside as free-spirited Darryl Dawkins, hailing from the planet Lovetron, shatters a backboard. Feel the emotion of Cleveland clinching a long-sought baseball pennant in ‘95. Even take a ride down an Olympic bobsled track. Listen to this and more from “Livy,” as he’s known in the business. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Bob Kravitz has been fearless in his 36 years of writing about sports. His strong opinions as a columnist have sometimes produced heated reactions from readers and sports figures since the early 1980s. Hear about some of those moments, including his introduction to Bob Knight that you won’t soon forget. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
History seems fragile when Bud Withers ponders his five decades of writing about sports. A free throw here. A turnover there. Tyus Edney going coast to coast. Small moments could have changed reputations and much more if they had gone another way. Withers recalls some of those March Madness memories from his Hall of Fame career at three major newspapers in the Pacific Northwest. We discuss the old-school coaching styles of legends Ralph Miller and Dick Harter, the rise of Gonzaga basketball, and how Ken Griffey Jr. impacted Seattle’s love of baseball. Oh, and there’s also a rental car story because, well, . . . sportswriters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Joan Ryan recalls in this episode the harassment that she suffered from pro football players early in her career as one of the first female sportswriters. She tells how that 1985 locker room incident made her determined to prove herself in a male-dominated industry. Ryan did so, and much more, while fearlessly helping to pave the way for other women in sports media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Pack your bags and travel back with Mike Lopresti, who globe-trotted for more than three decades as a sports columnist for USA Today and Gannett News Service. He tells us what it was like to slay deadline dragons, to be on a media bus that caught fire, and to hear roars at Augusta as Nicklaus makes an historic charge. He puts us with security guard Richard Jewell – a suspect later cleared – after the ’96 Olympic bombing. Mike puts us with the “Agony of Defeat” ski-jumper, with a wrestler so poor he never slept in a bed, and with speed skater Dan Jansen in heartbreak and later triumph. Hear this and more from a writer who used to spend 200 nights a year on a road. Join him now. It’s free and quite a trip. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
There was blood on Terence Moore’s shirt. That’s how close he sat to the ferocious Hagler-Hearns brawl. Terence has been near so much action in a career spanning more than 40 years. He puts us inside Billy Martin’s trashed office, and he takes us on a walk with a weeping Mark Aguirre after a legendary NCAA tournament upset. Hear about Woody Hayes calling from the hospital, and about “The Tooz” shooting a stop sign with a 44 Magnum. Terence tells us about the challenge of breaking down racial barriers in sports media, and about serving as a pallbearer at Henry Aaron’s funeral. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
He started out covering an American Legion baseball game in Maine for a newspaper audition. He ended up covering some of the greatest moments and players in baseball history for three decades. Jerry Crasnick tells us what it was like to talk hitting with Tony Gwynn and talk pitching with Greg Maddux. Hear about meeting Pete Rose for the first time, how the Hit King joyfully filled notebooks with mangled syntax, and what it was like covering him daily during the infamous gambling scandal. Get the scoop on The Nasty Boys, but you won’t want a scoop of Marge Schott’s hash browns after one shared story. Good thing the owner banned him from the media dining room. Oh, and somehow Jerry can still hear despite being in the press box when Roseanne sang (screeched?) the national anthem in 1990. The ramparts!
Come back on August 18th when we are hanging out with Terence Moore! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
While growing up in a two-stoplight town in Texas, Randy Harvey yearned to see the world. Sportswriting brought his dream to life during a half-century at newspapers, including 30 years at the Los Angeles Times. He covered 15 Summer and Winter Olympic Games, as well as four World Cups. Randy tells us about being there for the perfect gymnastic routines of Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton. He recounts the speed of Carl Lewis, the drug downfall of Ben Johnson, and the consistent greatness of Edwin Moses. Sit in the rocking Rose Bowl with him as Brandi Chastain’s goal wins the ’99 World Cup for the U.S. women’s national team. And go behind the scenes with Randy’s NBA beat reporting on the Showtime Lakers of Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and their well-coiffed coach, Pat Riley.
Tune in on Aug. 4th when we are hanging out with Jerry Crasnick! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Try writing on deadline when Larry Holmes leaps off a car to brawl with Trevor Berbick in a parking lot. George Diaz tells us what that was like to be there for the Orlando Sentinel. He also takes us into Don King’s home to hang out with Mike Tyson and onto the streets of Panama with the “Hands of Stone,” Roberto Duran. Hear what it was like at Daytona International Speedway on the day Dale Earnhardt died. George also recalls returning to his homeland of Cuba for the 1991 Pan American Games, where Fidel Castro walked into a bowling alley.
Come back on July 21 when we are talking to Randy Harvey! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
An NFL player tried to run him over with his car. He survived a crash in another car driven by Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. He rode in John Madden’s bus, and even piloted the Goodyear Blimp into a U-turn. Oh, the humanity. Yes, covering the NFL has been an interesting ride for Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times. Sam takes us along on those journeys, and he puts us in some other unique places that have dotted the path of his decorated career from covering America’s favorite sport. Find something unexpected in Al Davis’ hotel suite. Float in the Dead Sea with Joe Montana and other Hall of Fame players on a trip to Israel. Oh, and play a round of golf with Donald Trump. Hear the reaction of the former President when Sam tried to settle their bet after 18 holes. It’s priceless.
Come back for another round on July 7 when we are hanging out with George Diaz! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Come join Mark Purdy inside the tiny hockey arena as the “Miracle on Ice” erupts at the 1980 Winter Olympics. He’ll also put you on site of the earthquake that struck the Bay Area’s World Series. Mark recalls other rocking moments from his four decades as a sportswriter, including 33 years as a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. He explains how Paul Brown’s decision about Bill Walsh fueled a 49ers dynasty, and how that NFL empire had an ultra-competitive relationship – between a couple of QBs named Montana and Young – at its core. Hear how McCovey Cove originated, how Sparky Anderson had journalism advice, and how Barry Bonds was to deal with as a reporter when home runs and steroid accusations were flying. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Marla Ridenour has eagerly taken fans to the front lines of sports since the 1970s. Her enthusiasm for the task has never wavered, even when battling barriers against women sportswriters. Marla has maintained a keen appreciation for the moment, and it comes through as she recounts walking alongside Jack Nicklaus on the Old Course, serving as the eyes of Jim Murray at the Kentucky Derby, and witnessing the class of Earnest Byner after The Fumble. You’ll hear what it looked and sounded like when Cleveland fans literally dismantled Municipal Stadium, and when they filled downtown streets in celebration of a long-awaited championship. And, oh, Marla once hung up on Bill Belichick to end his harangue. Now that’s a special moment. Hear all about it – and more.
Come back next time when we are talking to Mark Purdy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
College football is a cyclone of emotion, passion, and downright insanity. Dennis Dodd has been chasing the game’s outbursts since its growth from a regional sport into a national obsession. He’ll take you along with the Big Eight Skywriters, into the Boz’s dorm room, and to breakfast with Bobby Bowden. He’ll put you at the Flea Kicker, the Kick Six, the Colorado-Miami brawl. Hear about Pete Carroll, Tom Osborne, and Barry “Hang-Half-a-Hundred-on-em” Switzer. Oh, and Todd has a story about beer, a Styrofoam cup . . . and Darrell Royal.
Tune in next time when we are talking to Marla Ridenour! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What was it like inside the old Boston Garden? To smell Red Auerbach’s victory cigar? To see firsthand Bird’s Celtics and Magic’s Lakers battle for basketball supremacy? Bob Ryan knows as well as anyone, and he puts you there when the NBA was a fledgling pro sport in the late ‘60s, and takes you all the way through its growth into a world game. He shares behind-the-scenes details from his illustrious career of more than four decades at the Boston Globe. He’s known as “the quintessential American sportswriter” for good reason. Few can match the sporting events – hoops and so much more – that Bob has chronicled, and done so with indomitable enthusiasm. You can still hear it in his voice. Listen to Bob, and you’ll feel as if you’re courtside with him, seeing Havlicek run, Cowens roar, and Jordan fly.
Stop back on May 12 when we are getting more great stories from Dennis Dodd! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Being among the trailblazers for women sportswriters came with certain stakes. “I knew there would be people watching and probably hoping that I’d fail,” Christine Brennan says. Hear what it was like being on the front lines of the NFL’s locker room issue in the 1980s. Christine discusses her daily dealings with Joe Gibbs, and takes us into the wider world of the Olympics. The USA Today columnist has covered 18 summer and winter Games, where drama ranges from the great Greg Louganis hitting his head on a diving board to a fur-cloaked Russian figure skating judge admitting “the fix was in.” And, oh yeah, Christine will tell you about Nancy and Tonya. She was there every day of the soap opera.
Come back on April 28th when we are talking to the one and only Bob Ryan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
His editor told him to stay away from the office because there were no stories to be told in there. Dick Jerardi took that command and lived it. He scoured gymnasiums, arenas, and horse tracks. There, he discovered great characters and told their stories for 33 years at the Philadelphia Daily News. Join him as he recounts to Todd in his funny, Philly style detailed tales about John Chaney, Hank Gathers, and Smarty Jones among many others.
Come on back April 14th when we are talking to Christine Brennan! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Some things you can’t unsee, especially when viewed up close. Kevin Blackistone was ringside when Mike Tyson chomped off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear. The horror. The horror. Kevin recounts that infamous boxing moment and discusses an up-close look at the rollicking Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s. He also shares how his perspective as an African American and a former news reporter informed his coverage of sports at home and abroad. In his keen view, all journalism is advocacy in one form or another. He sees more than games.
Come on back on March 31st when we are talking to Dick Jerardi! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
He went to the circus with Muhammad Ali. Pulled pranks on Don Shula. Got thrown out of a hotel by Mr. T. Yes, few sportswriters can match the colorful career of Tom Archdeacon, known and beloved by peers as “Arch.” Take a joy ride with a storyteller who somehow always finds his way to the heart of a matter. The legend is true, as recounted to Todd. Stick with Arch, and you can’t go wrong. Just hang on.
Come on back on March 3rd for our second episode! Todd is talking to Tom Archdeacon, and oh boy does he have some good stories!
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Bob Hunter once found himself in a cinder-block office listening to Woody Hayes and Bobby Knight talk about World War II. Hunter will take you inside that room and to other offbeat places that he ventured such as Pete Rose’s home in the early ’70s. Bob and Todd discuss anecdotes about the greatest coaches and athletes producing historic, goose-bump sports moments while still being flawed like all of us.
Come on back on March 3rd for our second episode! Todd is talking to Tom Archdeacon, and oh boy does he have some good stories!
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Coming February 17th with a new episode every other Wednesday, hear some of the greatest sports stories ever told from the writers who had front row access! Here is a sneak peek at some of our guests this season! Episode 1 Bob Hunter, Feb. 17 Episode 2 Tom Archdeacon, March 3 Episode 3 Kevin Blackistone, March 17 Episode 4 Dick Jerardi, March 31 Episode 5 Christine Brennan, April 14 Episode 6 Bob Ryan, April 28 and many more............... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sit down with host Todd Jones and other sportswriters who knew the greatest athletes and coaches, and experienced first-hand some of the biggest sports moments in the past 50 years. They’ll share stories behind the stories -- some they’ve only told to each other. Premiering Feb. 17 with a new episode every other Wednesday, here is a sneak peek at the season to come!
Episode 1 Bob Hunter, Feb. 17 Episode 2 Tom Archdeacon, March 3 Episode 3 Kevin Blackistone, March 17 Episode 4 Dick Jerardi, March 31 Episode 5 Christine Brennan, April 14 Episode 6 Bob Ryan, April 28 and many more............... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices