Larry Fitzgerald's dad

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3848921

So Rick Reilly has informed us this week that Larry Fitzgerald's pops is a sports reporter who has covered 28 Super Bowls. He apparently writes for a publication called the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder.

Not being from the area, I had only heard of the Pioneer Press and Star-Tribune in terms of newspapers from the fine state of Minnesota. So I come to find out that the Spokesman-Recorder is a weekly.

My head is spinning with questions, but here are a few.

1. How is a weekly sending a reporter to a Super Bowl each year?
2. Isn't all the attention being drawn to Mr. Fitzgerald, Sr. a bit dishonest (I saw a similar story in USA Today), as he's being portrayed as a asking-all-the-tough-questions beat reporter?
3. Can anyone confirm this gentleman as being legitimate?

 

No. 1 is a good question, but you can work at a weekly paper and still be 'legitimate.'

 

Didn't mean that as a slam on weekly reporters. But in my (albeit limited) experience of covering the NFL and MLB, I have not once seen a weekly reporter in the press box or at practice. Perhaps this is different in other parts of the country.

 

Is it a paper geared to the black community? Not at all uncommon for those papers to be represented in press boxes I've frequented.

 

We've had this here before... but yeah, he's legit... can't find the link here, and best web one is a (ugh) Reilly column...

 

It's also very possible his paper isn't paying for his travel because Jr. is taking care of Pops.

 

That's probably very true, for the last couple of Super Bowls, at least. But it said in Reilly's story he's covered 38 Super Bowls. Not many weeklies I know have the budget to travel to 38 high school state tournaments, let alone 38 Super Bowls.

I know one thing, this weekly is not Gannett-owned. (/crossthreading)

Edited because I left the word NOT out of my last line.

 

Never mind the travel budget, how would a weekly paper in Minnesota be getting a Super Bowl credential in the first place?

 

How many people put Cardinals on their request way back in November?

I imagine there are vacancies.

 

Yeah, but a weekly in Minnesota getting a pass every year for 38 years seems odd.

As for the expense of it, perhaps Mr. Fitzgerald pays his own way simply so he can attend the Super Bowl each year. He wouldn't be the first writer at a small shop to do that. And he won't be the last.

 

I looked it up. The paper is geared to the African-American community. If it's been 38 years, they were probably requesting credentials when the SB media list wasn't three miles long and thus got "grandfathered" in. I suspect the NFL would be sensitive to a request from a minority media outlet, too.

My guess is they went to the SB one year when the Vikings were in it, and kept going.

 

I will say when I lived in Phoenix there was a free weekly paper called The Phoenix New Times which I could easily see sending a person to the SB every year.