About Me

I’ve been a sports journalist for most of my 36 years in this profession. I’ve been a writer and an editor. I’ve covered little league games and Super Bowls, worked on a tiny paper in Manassas, Va. and helped start ESPN the Magazine. Now I’m writing for True/Slant, freelancing, writing a book, and teaching journalism at Stony Brook University. I’ve lived and died with the Jets, Knicks, and Yankees. That stage of life is pretty much over now, though what happens to all three teams still interest me. And the playoffs are still appointment television. I now see sports almost always as a metaphor for what is happening around me. I see college athletic programs exploiting poor minority athletes and wonder why it exists and what it says about us. I watch a former White House press secretary manage Mark McGwire’s return to baseball and wonder why we can’t have an intelligent conversation about performance enhancing drugs. I read about former NFL players committing suicide after years of playing with concussions, and wonder how the NFL owners, coaches, trainers—and fans—can sleep at night. This is pretty much the reason I continue to write about sports. You write what interests you, and reach a wide audience. Everyone read and heard about the Duke Lacrosse story. Everyone talks about the Super Bowl. Everyone has their take on steroids. Sports is a common denominator, second only to religion, and its closing in fast. For Tiger Woods, that was unfortunate. To those of us in the business, it’s amazing.