The last time the Kansas City Chiefs appeared in the Super Bowl? It was 50 years ago, on January 11, 1970. And I saw that game — because I have never missed a Super Bowl. Seen ’em all, if not in person (about a dozen of those as a sports journalist), then on TV. So, […]

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February 3, 2008. Super Bowl 42. New York Giants 17, New England Patriots 14. That would be the 12-point underdog Giants taking down the 18-0 Patriots, who were out to become the first 19-0 champs in NFL history. And I was there. How lucky was I? I covered what still is the most dramatic and […]

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Joe Namath has a new biography out, and in it the former New York Jets hero and leader of the great upset victory in Super Bowl III relates his spending Christmas alone, in December of 1979. The episode is outlined in this excerpt from “All the Way: My Life in Four Quarters.” And nearly any […]

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It seems a bit ludicrous now, given the carnage in print journalism, how important “beating” the local opposition was for us. When I wrote a long blog entry, in 2008, I declared an end to what was nearly a 100 Years War between two suburban newspapers in the Inland Empire of Southern California. I worked […]

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Interesting, how the usage of phrases ebbs and flows. Especially when it is in the guise of false respect — a common point of view when arguing about sports. For decades, and maybe even before that, the expression “with all due respect” ruled the false-respect roost. It worked like this: Person A made a statement […]

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I was watching the 2011 movie Moneyball in the wee hours last night, and I was struck, anew, by one big question: How did baseball writers evaluate what they were looking at … before the dawn of advanced analytics? How did veteran reporters — including most of them right on through the Baby Boomer demographic […]

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I have some history with Jonathan Wilson, going back to when I was in Abu Dhabi working for The National, the emirate’s English-language newspaper. Wilson was one of our European soccer correspondents, contributing a couple of pieces per week. He often took on topics focusing on what he perceived to be significant trends in the […]

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It is a cool November night, and I don’t know it yet, but I am sprawled on my back at the Cal State Los Angeles football field. Above me, a rectangular patch of vision switches on inside my facemask. On the fringes, darkness broken up by banks of electric lights. In the center, dominating the […]

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The last time I spoke with Brian Goff, I was a little annoyed with him, or so I thought. Really, I was annoyed with myself. See, Brian Goff did not annoy people. He was polite to the nth degree and seemed to have no enthusiasm for drama in the workplace. Or raised voices, for that […]

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Readers of a certain age — say, 30 years or more — will remember when major newspapers were big, colorful, information-packed marvels of news gathering. Before the Age of Great Newspapers ended, around the turn of the century, it had been observed by many subscribers that Sunday editions, in particular, with all their special sections […]

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