Billy Paultz Reconsidered

The following post to the web site newslanc.com (Motto: “Break free from the monopoly press!”) came in reaction to my feature last week on McCaskey High School athletics…
An implication of the Sept. 21st Sunday News article “McCaskey’s Challenge” was that McCaskey High School’s teams are performing so poorly because the players are subject to all […]

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A tiny annual treat of covering college football is picking up one’s copy of Phil Steele’s annual preview magazine. In addition to being fun to peruse, for sportswriters it’s an essential tool, really 119 team media guides plus much more, an exhaustive effort that annually blows away its competition by prediction accuracy or any other […]

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Here’s my column in the May 11 Sunday News, sort of relevant here because it’s about “new media,” blogs and etc. I should probably do more of this kind of thing. In fact, I will. Promise….
Old, new media can coexist
Question: I’m a fiftyish white male sportswriter, so how come I’m not as angry […]

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This is from a transcript, provided by Penn State sports information, of JoePa’s press conference before the Blue-White game. The questions are in bold, Joe’s answers in regular type, and my comments in italic. Maybe I’ll do this for every Joe presser during the season…
How has the Blue-White Game evolved since your first Blue-White […]

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I have never seen what others seem to in Don Nelson, the longtime NBA coach regarded by many basketball people as an eccentric near-genius. When Nelson took over the Golden State Warriors last season  and oversaw a modest turnaround and then an impressive defeat of Dallas in the first round of the playoffs, I thought […]

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Now here’s a class I could guest lecture: “Joe Paterno, Communications and The Media.”
Mike Poorman, who conceived the course and will teach it, is an old friend. I don’t think Joe is quite as crafty and calculating in his dealings with us as Mike does. Still, Joe’s been doing what he does, in the same […]

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So Terrelle Pryor is going to Ohio State, as has been long suspected.
Not sure this is a bad thing for Penn State. They have a quarterback for next year. They have a QB for the year after that. Drop Pryor into Happy Valley and you immediately have a QB controversy, probably with players taking sides, etc. […]

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In 1976 I casually started in on a Sports Illustrated piece about the University of Pittsburgh football team (Tony Dorsett, et al) which ended up that year’s mythical national champion. Not far in, there was that moment when you recheck the byline because it dawns on your you’re reading great writing.
That was the first time […]

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One problem with Hillary’s “experience” argument vis-a-vis Obama is if she was running against Joe Biden or Chris Dodd (or John McCain), you’d never hear the word come out of her mouth.
But, as George Will points out today, that’s not the only problem:
“Nothing, however, will assuage Clinton supporters’ sense of injustice if the upstart […]

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Right after I shut down the computer last night, MSNBC went to a panel including Joe Scarborough, who said people shouldn’t be critical of the punditocracy getting the Hillary thing so wrong because it was like sportswriters predicting the Yankees would beat the Red Sox (in the 2004 ALCS) after having a 3-0 lead.
Ugh. This […]

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