If you missed it, make sure to go back and listen to our part 1 episode with Hoynes, who has been covering Major League Baseball in Cleveland for more than four decades: https://evergreenpodcasts.com/press-box-access/paul-hoynes-part-1-im-sweating-bullets-shaking-trying-to-calm-myself-down#episodeContent

Hoynes has been a Guardians/Indians beat writer since 1983 for The News-Herald (1983-84), The Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com (1985 to present). His “Hey Hoynsie” column has been a longtime favorite of readers in northeast Ohio. He is past president of the Baseball Writers Association of America, and The Press Club of Cleveland inducted Hoynes into the Club’s Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame in 2013. Before becoming a baseball writer 41 years ago, he covered the Browns, Cavaliers and high school sports for The Cleveland Press, News-Herald, and Painesville Telegraph. Hoynes was born and raised in Cleveland, and he earned a journalism degree from Marquette University.

You can follow Paul on X: @hoynsie

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Part 2 comes out April 24 and that episode will pick up when the Indians, now known as the Guardians, began their glorious run in the 1990s.

Hoynes has been a Guardians/Indians beat writer since 1983 for The News-Herald (1983-84), The Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com (1985 to present). His “Hey Hoynsie” column has been a longtime favorite of readers in northeast Ohio. He is past president of the Baseball Writers Association of America, and The Press Club of Cleveland inducted Hoynes into the Club’s Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame in 2013. Before becoming a baseball writer 41 years ago, he covered the Browns, Cavaliers and high school sports for The Cleveland Press, News-Herald, and Painesville Telegraph. Hoynes was born and raised in Cleveland, and he earned a journalism degree from Marquette University. 

You can follow Paul on X: @hoynsie

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Thanks to Malcolm Moran, Mark Whicker, Dick “Hoops” Weiss, Bob Ryan, Terence Moore, Jerry Tipton, Bud Withers, Tony Barnhart, Geoff Calkins, Dick Jerardi, Mike DeCourcy, and Wendell Barnhouse for their time and stories. Rock on.

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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, Sutton, Pitino, Smith, Billy Gillispie, 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.

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.

“Déjà Blue—A Sportswriter Reflects on 41 Seasons of Kentucky Basketball,” is scheduled to be released in late April. You can order Jerry’s book online at https://www.acclaimpress.com/books/deja-blue/

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In this episode, Elliott recounts how Wayne Gretzky set 61 NHL records and triggered a hockey boom in Southern California as an ambassador for that sport. She also has a funny tale about the Great One’s fear of flying. Elliott tells us why the Stanley Cup is the most difficult trophy to win in sports, how great players rise to the occasion like Mark Messier did for the ’94 Rangers, and what it was like to cover the “Miracle on Ice” at the 1980 Olympics. And we hear how Helene overcame barriers faced by female sportswriters to become a Hall of Famer. Oh, and she has a story about Lenny and Squiggy from the old “Laverne & Shirley” TV show.

Elliott began writing for Los Angeles Times in 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 nearly every Stanley Cup Finals since 1980. 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

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Molinari was enshrined in the media wing of the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2009 when he received the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award for print journalism, which is given each year by the Professional Hockey Writers' Association. After beginning his journalism career at the McKeesport Daily News, Molinari joined the Pittsburgh Press as a copy editor in 1980. That paper assigned him to cover the Penguins and NHL in the summer of 1983. When the Pittsburgh Press folded at the end of 1992, Molinari moved to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and continued covering the Penguins and NHL until 2017, when his primary responsibility became Penn State football. He returned to hockey writing and the Penguins beat in June 2019 when, after 39-plus years at newspapers, he joined DK Pittsburgh Sports, a subscription website. Molinari began writing for a different website, Pittsburgh Hockey Now, in May 2022.

After growing up in the McKeesport suburbs of Glassport and Elizabeth Township near Pittsburgh, Molinari earned a journalism degree from Penn State. He is the author of two books:

“Mario Lemieux: Best There Ever Was,” written along with Ron Cook and Chuck Finder.

“Best in the Game: The Turbulent Story of the Pittsburgh Penguins' Rise to Stanley Cup Champions”

You can follow Dave on X: @MolinariPGH

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Vaccaro has been the lead sports columnist for the New York Post since 2002, and he has been named New York Sportswriter of the Year four times by the National Sports Media Association. He has covered the Olympics, World Cup soccer, Super Bowl, NBA Finals, World Series, Stanley Cup playoffs, Final Four and college football championship games numerous times. Vac not only writes about local, national, and international sports, he also writes a Sunday column called “Open Mike.”

The Associated Press Sports Editors, the New York State Publishers Association, the New York Press Club, and the Poynter Institute are among those that have awarded Vaccaro more than 100 journalism honors during his career, which began in 1989 at the Olean (N.Y) Times Herald. He became the sports editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times in 1991, then wrote sports columns for the Middletown (NY) Times Herald-Record, Kansas City Star, and Newark Star-Ledger before joining the New York Post in November 2002.

Vaccaro is the author of three books: “Emperors and Idiots” (about the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry); “1941 – The Greatest Year in Sports”; and “The First Fall Classic” (about the 1912 World Series).

A native of West Hempstead, N.Y., Vaccaro graduated in 1989 from St. Bonaventure University, where his name was added to the Jandoli School Wall of Distinguished Graduates in 2022.

You can read Vaccaro’s columns for the New York Post at this link: https://nypost.com/author/mike-vaccaro/ 

Here is Vac’s column about how past personal struggles helped make 2023 a glorious year: https://nypost.com/2023/12/23/sports/past-personal-struggles-helped-make-2023-a-glorious-year/ 

@MikeVacc

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Dave Kindred, on my Mount Rushmore of sportswriters, covered 17 of Ali’s fights, dating back to when he wrote for The Courier-Journal in the champ’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

Jerry Izenberg, who began his amazing journalism career in 1951, covered more of Ali’s fights than any sportswriter, including epic bouts with Joe Frazier and George Foreman that live on in boxing history.

Tom Archdeacon has covered more than 200 fights as a columnist and honored boxing writer in Ohio and Florida, and he not only sat ringside at Ali’s final three bouts but also went to the circus with him.

Tim Smith covered the fight game for many years at The New York Times, New York Daily News, and Cincinnati Enquirer, and he now works for Haymon Sports, a boxing management company.

Thom Loverro, sports columnist at The Washington Times and an honored boxing writer, first met Ali as a young reporter visiting training camp in the late 1970s.

Vito Stellino is best known as a longtime NFL writer, but he was ringside at Madison Square Garden in 1971 as a reporter covering the legendary Ali-Frazier I.

Mary Schmitt Boyer puts us in Atlanta, Georgia on the night when Ali lit the Olympic torch, providing her a most treasured memory of the many Olympics that she covered.

George Diaz had encounters with Ali as a longtime Florida boxing writer, and he’s also the ghostwriter of legendary fighter Roberto Duran’s autobiography, “I Am Duran.”

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The Baseball Writers’ Association of America named Stark the 2019 winner of its Career Excellence Award, which he received at the Hall of Fame induction weekend in Cooperstown, New York. Jayson worked 21 years at his hometown Philadelphia Inquirer, first serving as the Phillies’ beat reporter (1979-82) and then becoming the paper’s national baseball writer and columnist in ’83. His Baseball Week in Review column proved so popular in syndication that it continued after he was hired by ESPN in 2000. For the next 17 years, Stark served as a senior baseball writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine while making regular appearances on the cable network’s TV shows “Baseball Tonight,” “SportsCenter” and “Outside the Lines,” as well as regular ESPN Radio guest spots on “Mike and Mike” and as co-host of a weekly radio show during the baseball season on ESPN Radio’s affiliate in Philadelphia. His TV work includes appearances on Major League Baseball Productions, NFL Films and Philadelphia’s Comcast SportsNet. He is also a former baseball analyst for the Sports Fan radio network and a commentator on the Phillies’ pregame radio show.

Despite his popularity and proficiency, Stark was laid off by ESPN in April 2017. He has been covering baseball at The Athletic and MLB Network since 2018. Jayson also served as a columnist for Baseball America for 16 years and has written for Sports Illustrated, Sport, Inside Sports, Sporting News, Men’s Fitness and Athlon. His first job in journalism was at the Providence Journal (1975-78).

Stark has won an Emmy for his work on "Baseball Tonight," has been inducted into the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame and is a two-time winner of the Pennsylvania Sportswriter of the Year award given by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. He was a finalist for that group’s National Sportswriter of the Year award in 2017. Stark was honored by Penn State’s Foster Conference for Distinguished Writers in 2010. He has won several awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors, and he was inducted into the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2017. That year, Topps issued a Jayson Stark baseball card.

Jayson is the author of three books:

• “Wild Pitches: Rumblings, Grumblings, and Reflections on the Game I Love” (2014)
• “Worth The Wait: Tales of the 2008 Phillies” (2011)
• “The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History” (2007)

Stark earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Syracuse University in 1973. He was born in Philadelphia and grew up in the city’s Northeast section. His mother, June Herder Stark, wrote for the Philadelphia Record and worked alongside legendary sportswriter Red Smith. She later edited the Philadelphia edition of Where Magazine.

You can follow Stark on X: @jaysonst

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DeCourcy, a member of the United States Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, is in his 37th season of covering college basketball, including 29 seasons for The Sporting News. He’ll be working his 34th Final Four in 2024. Mike has been a studio analyst at the Big Ten Network since 2010 and an NCAA tournament bracket analyst for Fox Sports since 2020. His career began in 1983 at the Pittsburgh Press, where he spent the next 10 years. Mike then moved to Memphis at the Commercial Appeal (1993-97) before joining the Cincinnati Enquirer (1997-2000).

While working in Cincinnati and Memphis, DeCourcy also served as college basketball columnist at The Sporting News, beginning in 1995. He joined The Sporting News fulltime in 2000. Besides college hoops, Mike also writes frequently about the NFL and soccer in his role as senior writer. He writes magazine-length features, enterprise, analysis, and covers breaking news.

DeCourcy is the author of two books: “Legends of College Basketball: The 100 Greatest Players of All Time” and “Inside Basketball: From the Playgrounds to the NBA.”

Mike was born in Pittsburgh and graduated from Point Park University there in 1981 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communication.

You can follow him on X: @tsnmike

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Thiel knows all the rings in the sports tree of the Pacific Northwest, where he has been a professional journalist since 1975, including 29 years as columnist at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He covered numerous Olympics, Super Bowls, and World Series after joining the P-I in 1980 and serving as the Post-Intelligencer’s sports columnist from ’87 until the print edition died in 2009. Art continued writing for the paper’s website until 2010, when he left to become co-founder, president and columnist at Sportspress Northwest. He spent 12 years writing for SportsPressNW.com – which focused on Seattle’s pro teams and University of Washington sports – until that website stopped publishing in 2022. Art now writes for PostAlley.org, a Seattle-centric website.

Art’s career began at the Bellevue (Wash.) Journal-American after he graduated in 1975 with a communications degree at Pacific Lutheran University, where he played basketball. He then moved to The News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington, where he grew up, before becoming a mainstay at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1980.

Thiel was also a well-known radio sports commentator on the Seattle NPR affiliate KPLU-FM, on ESPN 710 Seattle, and on KNKX. He wrote the definitive book about the Seattle Mariners, “Out of Left Field,” which became a regional bestseller. Art is also co-author of “Russel Wilson: Standing Tall” and co-author of “The Great Book of Seattle Sports Lists.”

You can follow him on X: @Art_Thiel

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Pucin covered multiple Olympics, Super Bowls, Final Fours, World Series, all four major tennis tournaments, college football bowl games, and the Tour de France. She was a sports columnist, sports media critic, and an Olympic and tennis writer for the Los Angeles Times from 1998 to 2014. She had previously worked 12 years at the Philadelphia Inquirer, where from 1986 to ’98, she covered Olympics, college basketball, tennis and became a columnist. That paper nominated her coverage of the Barcelona Olympics for the Pulitzer Prize. In Philly, she also won awards for column writing and a first-place award from the Associated Press Sports Editors for a game story. From 1978 to ’86, Diane worked at the Louisville Courier-Journal, where she was a beat reporter on Indiana University football and basketball. She also was a sports reporter at the Cincinnati Post, as well as the Columbus (Ga.) Enquirer.

Pucin graduated from Marquette University in 1976.

Follow her on X: @DianePucin

Fun fact: Diane’s husband, Dan Weber, is a longtime sportswriter and was my first professional editor in 1987 at the Kentucky Post in Covington, Ky.

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Make sure to check out part 1 with Pierce. In that first episode, we discussed bars, Bird, Bill Buckner’s error, Ben Johnson’s drug scandal, and 1980s Big East basketball:

https://evergreenpodcasts.com/press-box-access/charles-pierce-part-1-they-rolled-the-champagne-out-of-the-red-soxs-locker-room#episodeContent

Pierce has been the lead political writer for Esquire since September 2011. He worked nine years for the Boston Globe as a reporter, sports columnist and staff writer for that paper’s Sunday magazine starting in 2002. He had previously been a sports columnist for the Boston Herald. Pierce left the Globe in 2011 to join Esquire fulltime after having been a contributing writer for that magazine since 1997. He was a feature writer and columnist for The National Sports Daily in 1990 and ’91. His articles on sports and politics have also appeared in GQ, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Nation, The Atlantic American Prospect, Slate, the Chicago Tribune, ESPN’s Grantland, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and the Media Matters blog Altercation. Pierce has made appearances on ESPN’s “Around the Horn” and often co-hosted NESN’s “Globe 10.0” with Bob Ryan. Pierce was a longtime regular panelist on the NPR quiz show “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!” and has made appearances on the NPR program “Only A Game.” The Massachusetts native began his journalism career in 1976 at his hometown Worcester Magazine before moving to Boston two years later to write for the alternative publication, The Phoenix.

In 2018, the United States Basketball Writers Association inducted Pierce into its Hall of Fame. He won a National Headliners Aware in 2004 for his Boston Globe Magazine piece, “Deconstructing Ted.” He has been named a finalist for the Associated Press Sports Editors’ award for best column writing on several occasions. Many of his stories have been featured in the annual compilation, “Best American Sportswriting.” Pierce was a 1996 National Magazine Award finalist for his piece on Alzheimer’s disease, “In the Country of My Disease.” He was awarded third place in the Pro Basketball Writers Association’s Dan S. Blumenthal Memorial Writing Contest.

Pierce is the author of four books:

· “Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue In The Land Of The Free”

· “Moving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything”

· “Sports Guy: In Search of Corkball, Warroad Hockey, Hooters Golf, Tiger Woods, and the Big, Big Game”

· “Hard to Forget: An Alzheimer’s Story”

Pierce earned a degree in journalism from Marquette University in 1975. His alma mater honored him with a “2021 Alumni National Award – Byline Award,” to which Pierce responded: “I’d like to think that my getting this award might encourage students who don’t feel like they fit in and show them that this profession still values ferocious eccentricity.”

Here’s a link to Pierce’s political blog for Esquire: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/

You can follow him on X at: @CharlesPPierce

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Part 2 of my conversation with Pierce will be published on Nov. 8 and include more stories about Bird and discussion about Tiger Woods, Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, the NBA of the 1980s and early ’90s, the National Sports Daily, and other tales.

Pierce has been the lead political writer for Esquire since September 2011. He worked nine years for the Boston Globe as a reporter, sports columnist and staff writer for that paper’s Sunday magazine starting in 2002. He had previously been a sports columnist for the Boston Herald. Pierce left the Globe in 2011 to join Esquire fulltime after having been a contributing writer for that magazine since 1997. He was a feature writer and columnist for The National Sports Daily in 1990 and ’91. His articles on sports and politics have also appeared in GQ, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Nation, The Atlantic American Prospect, Slate, the Chicago Tribune, ESPN’s Grantland, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and the Media Matters blog Altercation. Pierce has made appearances on ESPN’s “Around the Horn” and often co-hosted NESN’s “Globe 10.0” with Bob Ryan. Pierce was a longtime regular panelist on the NPR quiz show “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!” and has made appearances on the NPR program “Only A Game.” The Massachusetts native began his journalism career in 1976 at his hometown Worcester Magazine before moving to Boston two years later to write for the alternative publication, The Phoenix.

In 2018, the United States Basketball Writers Association inducted Pierce into its Hall of Fame. He won a National Headliners Aware in 2004 for his Boston Globe Magazine piece, “Deconstructing Ted.” He has been named a finalist for the Associated Press Sports Editors’ award for best column writing on several occasions. Many of his stories have been featured in the annual compilation, “Best American Sportswriting.” Pierce was a 1996 National Magazine Award finalist for his piece on Alzheimer’s disease, “In the Country of My Disease.” He was awarded third place in the Pro Basketball Writers Association’s Dan S. Blumenthal Memorial Writing Contest. 

Pierce is the author of four books:

· “Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue In The Land Of The Free”

· “Moving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything”

· “Sports Guy: In Search of Corkball, Warroad Hockey, Hooters Golf, Tiger Woods, and the Big, Big Game”

· “Hard to Forget: An Alzheimer’s Story”

Pierce earned a degree in journalism from Marquette University in 1975. His alma mater honored him with a “2021 Alumni National Award – Byline Award,” to which Pierce responded: “I’d like to think that my getting this award might encourage students who don’t feel like they fit in and show them that this profession still values ferocious eccentricity.”

Here’s a link to Pierce’s political blog for Esquire: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/

You can follow him on X at: @CharlesPPierce

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This is Moore’s second appearance on Press Box Access. Check out his first episode with us from Aug. 18, 2021 when Terence discussed challenges that he faced in breaking down racial barriers in sports media, being a pallbearer at Hank Aaron’s funeral, covering the epic Marvin Hagler-Thomas Hearns brawl, watching Billy Martin trash his office, and more. You can listen to that first episode here:

https://evergreenpodcasts.com/press-box-access/terence-moore-you-could-almost-feel-the-punches#episodeContent

Moore has covered 30 Super Bowls, numerous World Series and NBA Finals games, Final Fours, several Indianapolis 500, Daytona 500 and other auto races, major prize fights and golf tournaments, college football bowl games and more. In 1999, he was honored by the National Association of Black Journalists for ranking as the longest-running black sports columnist in the history of major newspapers.

Terence currently works as a national columnist for Forbes.com, writes opinion pieces for CNN.com, and is a contributor to ESPN.com, MLB.com and MSNBC.com. He also does work for the NFL Network, has a YouTube channel called Atlanta Sports Unlimited, and makes TV appearances every week on Sports Zone Sunday for the local ABC affiliate in Atlanta, the most-watched ABC affiliate in the country. That’s the city’s top-rated sports show. His national TV appearances include a guest spot on The Oprah Winfrey Show, regular commentaries on CNN-SI, and five years as a panelist on ESPN’s Rome is Burning.

Terence spent 25 years as a general sports columnist for the Atlanta-Journal Constitution before becoming a national sports columnist for AOL Sports in 2009. He later served as a national columnist for SportsonEarth.com.

Before moving to Atlanta in January 1985, Terence spent five years as a reporter at the San Francisco Examiner, where he covered the San Francisco Giants, the Oakland Raiders, the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco 49ers. That followed three years as a sports reporter at the Cincinnati Enquirer, which hired him eight days after he graduated from Miami (Ohio) University in 1978.

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Ocker was honored with the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for meritorious contributions to baseball writing. He was presented with that award in July 2018 at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum's induction in Cooperstown, N.Y. Besides his stellar reporting, Ocker was known for rarely taking a day off during a season when he covered baseball from 1981 until his retirement after the 2013 season. Sheldon was named the Ohio Sports Writer of the Year in 1997 and 2000 by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. He served as the president of the Baseball Writers’ Assocation of America in 1985 and as chair of the Cleveland chapter 11 times.

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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

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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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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.

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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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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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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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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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Pearce has covered thousands of races of all types: NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula One, NHRA and IHRA drag racing, APBA powerboats, SCCA, international sports cars and weekly short-track races. Motorsports has taken him to 50 states and a half-dozen countries on assignment including Japan, Australia, Mexico, Canada, and Le Mans, France. Al covered motorsports for the Times-Herald and Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia from 1969 until his retirement in 2004. He is still a NASCAR contributing editor for Autoweek magazine, which he has written for since 1973. Besides racing, Al also wrote about professional, college and high school sports throughout his 35 years in newspapers.

The Media Wing of the International Motorsports Hall of Fame at Talladega, Ala. Inducted Pearce in 2003. That same year, he received the Henry McLemore Award, the highest recognition for a motorsport journalist. He’s also been honored by Langley Speedway, Pocono Raceway, Martinsville Speedway, and by the Peninsula Sports Club. Al won eight Virginia Press Association Awards, and he’s a member of the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame.

Pearce has written 16 books about motorsports. “NASCAR 75 Years” is his latest. It was co-authored with Mike Hembree and published in April 2023. Al is a native of Rocky Mount, Virginia, graduated from Presbyterian College, and served in the Vietnam war as an officer before beginning his journalism career in 1969.

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Barnhouse was a media fixture on the national scene of college sports for more than 30 years, beginning in the mid-1980s. After three years as assistant sports editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Wendell became that newspaper’s national college basketball writer during the 1985-86 season, which concluded with the Final Four being held in Dallas. He added national college football to his duties in 1994 and covered both beats – as well as writing a television-radio column – until his 25 years at the Star-Telegram ended in 2008 with the acceptance of a buyout. Wendell served as president of the United States Basketball Writers Association in 1995. He covered 26 Final Fours, 343 NCAA men’s tournament games, two women’s Final Fours, and 14 college football national championship games.

Wendell grew up in Columbia, Missouri, where his first journalism job was a summer part-time gig at the Columbia Daily Tribune in 1972. A year later, he was hired as the sports editor (one-person staff) at the Hannibal (Mo.) Courier-Post. Wendell spent four years as a sports reporter for the Quincy (Ill.) Herald-Whig beginning in 1974. He joined the sports copy desk at the Arizona Daily Star in 1979 for one year, then spent 18 months at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he served as assistant sports editor. He moved to Texas in 1981 to edit sports copy and layout pages for the Dallas Morning News. That led to his job in 1983 at the Fort Worth-Star Telegram, where he eventually returned to writing. Wendell worked as a correspondent (writer, TV/video host) for the Big 12 Conference from 2008 until 2015. He then freelanced for seven years, including one season of covering college basketball for The Athletic, before retiring in 2022.

Follow him on Twitter: @WBBarnhouse

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You can listen to part one of my conversation with Smith here: https://evergreenpodcasts.com/press-box-access/claire-smith-part-1-how-you-used-those-barrels-of-ink-mattered#episodeContent

Smith spent 32 years in the newspaper industry, starting in Pennsylvania at the Bucks County Courier Times. In 1979, she moved to The Philadelphia Bulletin, where she mostly covered college basketball and football. When that paper folded in 1982, she was hired by The Hartford Courant. By mid-season that year, she was put on the New York Yankees beat, making her the first woman to cover a Major League Baseball team, full-time. Claire covered the Yankees for five years before serving as the Courant’s national baseball columnist for three years. She became the New York Times’ first national baseball columnist in 1990 and held that role for eight years. In 1998, she moved to the Philadelphia Inquirer, where she was a columnist and assistant sports editor until 2007. Claire left newspapers in July 2007 to become a coordinator editor and baseball remote news editor at ESPN. She worked for the “Sunday Night Baseball” crew and the production team on MLB game broadcasts until November 2021.

In December 2016, Smith was named the 68th recipient of the Baseball Writers Association of America’s Career Excellence Award (formerly known as the J.G. Taylor Spink Award) – the highest honor a baseball writer can receive. She was the first woman to win the award, and the fourth African American, joining Sam Lacy, Wendell Smith and Larry Whiteside. Claire was honored at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s annual induction in July 2017. She was also presented the 2017 “Robie Award” for Lifetime Achievement by the Jackie Robinson Foundation.

Smith was named the inaugural winner of the Sam Lacy-Wendell Smith Award for the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism at the University of Maryland in 2013. Other milestones: Sports Journalist of the Year from the National Association of Black Journalists (1997); the Mary Garber Pioneer Award from the Association for Women in Sports Media (2000); the Sam Lacy Award at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (2010); and SAbR’s 2021 Dorothy Seymour Mills Lifetime Achievement Award. Smith was a member of the NABJ Hall of Fame’s Class of 2021.

Claire was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and she was winner of three New York Times Publishers’ Awards.

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Smith spent 32 years in the newspaper industry, starting in Pennsylvania at the Bucks County Courier Times. In 1979, she moved to The Philadelphia Bulletin, where she mostly covered college basketball and football. When that paper folded in 1982, she was hired by The Hartford Courant. By mid-season that year, she was put on the New York Yankees beat, making her the first woman to cover a Major League Baseball team, full-time. Claire covered the Yankees for five years before serving as the Courant’s national baseball columnist for three years. She became the New York Times’ first national baseball columnist in 1990 and held that role for eight years. In 1998, she moved to the Philadelphia Inquirer, where she was a columnist and assistant sports editor until 2007. Claire left newspapers in July 2007 to become a coordinator editor and baseball remote news editor at ESPN. She worked for the “Sunday Night Baseball” crew and the production team on MLB game broadcasts until November 2021.

In December 2016, Smith was named the 68th recipient of the Baseball Writers Association of America’s Career Excellence Award (formerly known as the J.G. Taylor Spink Award) – the highest honor a baseball writer can receive. She was the first woman to win the award, and the fourth African American, joining Sam Lacy, Wendell Smith and Larry Whiteside. Claire was honored at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s annual induction in July 2017. She was also presented the 2017 “Robie Award” for Lifetime Achievement by the Jackie Robinson Foundation.

Smith was named the inaugural winner of the Sam Lacy-Wendell Smith Award for the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism at the University of Maryland in 2013. Other milestones: Sports Journalist of the Year from the National Association of Black Journalists (1997); the Mary Garber Pioneer Award from the Association for Women in Sports Media (2000); the Sam Lacy Award at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (2010); and SAbR’s 2021 Dorothy Seymour Mills Lifetime Achievement Award. Smith was a member of the NABJ Hall of Fame’s Class of 2021.

Claire was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and she was winner of three New York Times Publishers’ Awards.

A 1979 graduate of Temple University, Smith returned to her alma mater in July 2021 as an assistant professor with Klein School of Media and Communications. With the assistance of the Black Women in Sports Foundation, Smith has long awarded Temple students The Bernice A. Smith scholarship, named after her mother, a Jamaican immigrant and Temple alum. In 2014, Temple honored Claire with a Lew Klein Alumni in the Media Award and inducted her into the School of Media and Communication Hall of Fame. 

In October 2021, Temple announced the creation of The Claire Smith Center For Sports Media. Claire co-directs the center with John DiCarlo, managing director of student media at Temple.

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Kurkjian was named the 2022 Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s Career Excellence Award winner (formerly the J.G. Taylor Spink award), presented annually to a writer “for meritorious contributions to baseball writing.” He was recognized at Baseball Hall of Fame ceremonies in July of ’22. Tim has been a senior writer for ESPN.com and a baseball writer, analyst, host and reporter for ESPN TV since 1998. He has served as an analyst for “Monday Night Baseball” and “Wednesday Night Baseball.” Tim earned an Emmy Award in 2002 for his work on “Baseball Tonight,” and he was honored with a second Emmy for his contributions to “SportsCenter” in 2003-04.

Tim was one of the first sportswriters to appear on TV as an analyst. He spent the first half of his career at newspapers and at Sports Illustrated, where he was a baseball senior writer for nine seasons (1998-97). He also worked as an on-air reporter for CNN-SI in his final two years at the magazine. His journalism career began at The Washington Star in 1978. He then worked briefly for the Baltimore News American in 1981 before joining the The Dallas Morning News to cover the Texas Rangers as a beat reporter beginning in the 1982 season. Tim moved to The Baltimore Sun in 1986 and covered the Baltimore Orioles as a beat writer through the 1989 season.

Kurkjian is the author of three books: “America’s Game” (2000), “Is This a Great Game or What?” (2007), and “I’m Fascinated by Sacrifice Flies” (2017). He grew up in Bethesda, Md. and attended Walter Johnson High School, named for the great Washington Senators pitcher. Tim graduated from the University of Maryland with a BS in journalism in 1978.

Follow Tim on Twitter: @Kurkjian_ESPN

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Jacobs has been named Connecticut Sportswriter of the Year 11 times (including 2022) by the National Sports Media Association. He has been honored four times by the Associated Press Sports Editors as one of the top-10 columnists in the country. Jeff spent nearly 34 years at the Hartford Courant before becoming sports columnist for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group in January 2018. He was the Hartford Courant’s sports columnist for 22 years after covering the Whalers and NHL as the paper’s beat reporter. Jeff has covered all four of the UConn men’s basketball national championships and 10 of the 11 NCAA titles won by Auriemma’s women’s program. He’s also covered multiple Olympics, World Series, Super Bowls, and Stanley Cup Finals.

Jacobs was born in Kirkwood, Mo., grew up in Newport, R.I., and is a 1977 graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He began his career as a hockey writer at The Times Herald in Port Huron, Michigan, and then covered the Flyers for The Courier Post (New Jersey) before joining the Hartford Courant in 1984.

Jeff likes to say that his hobby is surviving heart attacks. He had a double bypass surgery after his second one in 2019. His first heart attack, in 2005, required a quadruple bypass. Here’s to wishing Jeff great health and many more years of writing.

Follow Jeff on Twitter: @jeffjacobs123

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Cleveland, a native of Hattiesburg and resident of Jackson, has received more journalism awards than any sportswriter in Mississippi history. In January, he received his record 14th honor as the state’s best sportswriter from the National Sports Media Association. Rick was inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in 2016 and into the Hattiesburg Hall of Fame in 2018. He received the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence in 2011 and was inducted into the University of Southern Mississippi Communications Hall of Fame in 2018. In 2000, he was honored with the Distinguished Mississippian Award from Mississippi Press Association.

Rick has covered sports since 1966. His first story was published at age 13 for the Hattiesburg American, where he worked throughout high school and college. After earning bachelor’s degrees in journalism and history from the University of Southern Mississippi, he joined the Monroe (La.) News Star World for one year. Rick then returned to Mississippi at the Jackson Daily News before moving to that city’s Clarion-Ledger as a beat reporter covering Ole Miss and Mississippi State. He later became the paper’s sports editor and columnist. Since 2016, Cleveland has been writing a syndicated sports column for Mississippi Today after serving four years as executive director of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. Rick has covered 29 Super Bowls and has chronicled the NFL careers of Mississippi natives such as Payton, Favre, Manning, Jerry Rice, Steve McNair and Ray Guy. He has also covered several Masters tournaments, the 1996 Summer Olympics, the U.S. Open in golf, and Finals Four and College World Series appearances by Mississippi teams.

Three generations of Rick’s family have covered sports in Mississippi since 1946. His father, “Ace” Cleveland was a longtime sportswriter and editor at the Hattiesburg American before spending 33 years as sports information at Southern Miss. Ace worked 325 consecutive football games for the Golden Eagles, and he’s enshrined in the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. Rick’s brother, Bobby, spent 30 years as the outdoors writer for the Clarion-Ledger. Rick’s son, Tyler, has covered Mississippi sports for more than a decade.

Cleveland and his son, Tyler, host the podcast “Crooked Letter Sports,” which centers on Mississippi sports talk and stories. New episodes come out each Thursday. https://mississippitoday.org/crooked-letter-sports-podcast/

Rick has authored four books:

·   “It’s More Than a Game” – a collection of Cleveland’s columns.

·   “Vaught – The Man and his Legacy” about Ole Miss football coach Johnny Vaught.

·   “Boo – A Life in Baseball, Well-Lived” about former Boston Red Sox player Boo Ferriss.

·   “Mississippi’s Greatest Athletes”

Follow him on Twitter: @rick_cleveland

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Robbins spent 16 years of his career at the New York Post, beginning in 1997. He was that paper’s national college writer, wrote columns, and covered the NFL, NBA and the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. He appeared regularly on ESPN, FOX, NY1, SNY and YES. Prior to the Post, Lenn worked two stints at The Record in New Jersey (1985-90 and 1992-97), where he had several beats, including the New York Rangers, the NFL, and national college sports. He covered the NFC East and the NBA’s Atlantic Division for The National Sports Daily from 1990-92. His journalism career started at Greenwich Time in Greenwich, Connecticut after his graduation from Stony Brook University.

In 2013, Robbins left the New York Post to work for BrooklynNets.com and Barclays.com, where for two years he covered the Nets, the New York Islanders, championship boxing and college basketball. He also contributed stories for the Nets’ All-Access game programs, did weekly segments on Barclays Center Television, and made guest appearances on Nets’ game broadcasts on YES Network and WFAN. Lenn then joined MSGNetworks.com as the in-house, multi-media reporter for the Brooklyn Nets until 2017. He’s currently content director at BetBasics.com after previously serving as Editor-in-Chief of TheNYExtra.com.

Lenn is a former president of the Football Writers of America Association, and he’s a two-time winner in the Associated Press Sports Editors awards. In 2011, he received the Metropolitan College Football Writers Association’s Good Guy Award and the Jim Murray Outstanding Sportswriter Award.

In 2017, Lenn was diagnosed with Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis (LCH), a rare form of cancer in his head and neck, as he began studying for his Master’s degree in journalism. Despite undergoing treatments and suffering three relapses, he went on to earn that degree from the Craig Newmark School of Journalism at City University of New York in 2019. His cancer is in remission thanks to targeted gene therapy. He teaches journalism at the Newmark J-School, as well as at other universities in the New York City area.

Lenn wrote about his battle with cancer in hopes that chronicling his experience might help others: https://lennrobbins.wixsite.com/facetocancer

Follow Lenn on Twitter: @LennRobbins

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Bernie was the lead sports columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for 26 years (1989-2015), where he also blogged for the newspaper’s website STLtoday.com and produced many podcasts, including “Breakfast With Bernie” and the “Best Podcast in Baseball.” He left the Post-Dispatch to join 101 ESPN in St. Louis to host a three-hour, weekday radio talk show. Bernie currently writes for ScoopsWithDannyMac.com and he contributes podcasts and videos for that website. He also hosts a weekday afternoon radio talk show on “590 The Fan” KFNS. Bernie began his career at the Baltimore News-American in 1979 and later moved to St. Louis in 1985 to cover the NFL Cardinals for the Post-Dispatch. When that team moved to Arizona in 1988, he also left to join the Dallas Morning News, where he covered Tom Landry’s final season as coach of the Cowboys, the sale of the team to Jerry Jones, the hiring of Jimmy Johnson, and the drafting of Troy Aikman. Bernie returned to St. Louis the next year to become the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch. He has been that city’s top sports voice ever since. Bernie has provided extensive coverage of the Cardinals, the NHL Blues, two St. Louis NFL teams (including the Rams) and their departures, local college sports, and soccer, as well as more than 30 Super Bowls and multiple Olympics and World Series.

Follow Bernie on Twitter: @miklasz

Fun Fact: Miklasz has attended more than 125 concerts by Bruce Springsteen since the 1970s.

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Ford was an award-winning writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer for nearly 33 years – the final 18 as a columnist – until his retirement in 2020. He was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. Bob was a general assignment feature writer, with an emphasis on Olympic sports and long-form narrative from 1994 until his promotion as columnist in 2003. He previously covered the NBA and 76ers as the paper’s beat reporter for six years.

Bob was named Pennsylvania Sportswriter of the Year seven times by the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association. He covered six Olympics, three World Cups, numerous NBA Finals, the Tour de France, Wimbledon, the British Open and other major sporting events. He wrote stories from 14 countries and throughout the U.S. His work was also recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, and the Keystone Press Association. He was twice named a top 10 columnist in the large circulation division of the AP Sports Editors competition, and he also won the 2005 Eclipse Award for outstanding feature writing on thoroughbred racing.

Prior to joining the Inquirer in 1987, Bob worked six years at the Delaware County Daily Times outside of Philadelphia, where he covered the Phillies as a beat reporter for three seasons and later served as columnist. Bob began his journalism career as sports editor of the Easton (Md.) Star-Democrat (1976 to ’81) following his graduation from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. His alma mater’s Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism honored Bob in 2017 with a “Distinguished Terrapin” award. Ford is a fellow of the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism.

Bob is a native of College Park, Md. His wife, Bonnie Ford, was an award-winning sports journalist at ESPN, the Chicago Tribune, The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, the Detroit News, and the Ann Arbor News. She was a previous guest on Press Box Access: https://evergreenpodcasts.com/... Stories from early in her career were written under her maiden name, Bonnie DeSimone.

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Mary specialized in the NBA and Olympics at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland from 1996 until she retired from the newspaper business in 2014. She previously worked at the St. Paul Pioneer Press (1989-1995), the Milwaukee Journal (1978-1988), and the Minneapolis Tribune (1977-78).

She was also an intern reporter at the Washington Post, the Kansas City Star, and the Eugene (Oregon) Register-Guard.

In 2008, the Association for Women in Sport’s Media presented Schmitt Boyer with the Mary Garber Pioneer Award. The honor has been given annually since 1999 to those who have distinguished themselves in the field while reflecting and advancing the values and mission of AWSM. Mary served as AWSM president in 1993-94. She was president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association in 2013-14.

Mary has written or co-authored seven sports books:

· “Inside Game: Race, Power, and Politics in the NBA” – written with Wayne Embry and Spike Lee

· “The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly: Cleveland Indians – Heart-Pounding, Jaw-Dropping, and Gut-Wrenching Moments from Cleveland Indians History” – written with Terry Pluto

· “The Complete Encyclopedia of Basketball” – written with Ron Smith

· “Indians Essential: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Real Fan!” – written with Thomas Hamilton

· “Welcome to the Jungle”

· “Browns Essential: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Real Fan!” – written with Doug Dieken

· “Kobe Bryant”

Mary graduated from Marquette University in 1977 with a degree in journalism after serving as sports editor of the student newspaper, the Marquette Tribune. She’s a recipient of the Diederich College of Communications Award: the Journalism By-Line Award.

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Shelton has twice been named the No. 1 sports columnist in the country by the Associated Press Sports Editors. He was ranked in the APSE Top 5 five times, and the Top 10 eight times. Gary has been writing about sports in Tampa Bay since 1990, including a tenure of nearly 25 years at the Tampa Bay Times when the area grew into a huge sports market. He has covered the Buccaneers winning the Super Bowl, the Lightning winning the Stanley Cup, and the Rays in the World Series. He has also covered college football national championships won by Florida, Florida State and Miami, as well as 29 Super Bowls, 10 Olympics, 11 Final Fours, and the Masters seven times.

Prior to moving to Tampa Bay, Gary covered the Dolphins, the NFL, and college football for the Miami Herald from 1984-90. He has been named best sportswriter in Florida six times by the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association. He has also won several Green Eyeshade, Florida Sports Writers Association awards, and other honors. Shelton began his journalism career writing about sports – including Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, and Georgia Tech – for the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer in 1978. He likes to say that he graduated from Auburn University and the Don Shula School of Having My Face Yelled Into.

Shelton took a buyout from the Tampa Bay Times in 2014 and has since been writing for his own subscription website. You can read Gary’s columns at: https://garysheltonsports.com/

Contact Gary at GarySheltonSports@gmail.com

Follow him on Twitter: @Gary_Shelton

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

Follow David on Twitter: @David_C_Steele

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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

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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.

Follow Mark at @MWhicker03

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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.”

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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

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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

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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.

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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).

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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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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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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.”

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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 

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