RIP, Larry Felser

pseudo · Apr 24, 2013

http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130424/SPORTS/130429553/1109

Buffalo lost a legend today with the passing of Felser, the 1984 McCann Award winner who covered the Bills for every season of their existence until retiring as the Buffalo News sports editor in 2001. His successor as TBN's senior columnist, Jerry Sullivan, on that occasion: The Buffalo Guy

A younger sports writer can only imagine what it must have been like to cover the American Football League in 1960. It seems like such a distant time now. John F. Kennedy had not been elected when the first game was played. The space program was in its infancy. The tumult of the Sixties was still a faraway murmur.

It must have been incredibly exciting to be Larry Felser back then, to be a young reporter getting his first crack at pro football, to feel a writing career and a new football league ascending together, uncertain where it would all lead.

Felser hopped aboard the AFL that first year and he got the ride of his life. This week, he rides into retirement, leaving daily newspaper work exactly 50 years after taking his first job as a copy boy at the Courier-Express.

Pro football took him from creaky old ballparks to shiny domed stadiums; from portable typewriters to Windows 98; from Cookie Gilchrist to O.J. Simpson to Thurman Thomas; from the old Courier to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

He saw the AFL grow, in the space of 10 years, from a maverick upstart league to a respected competitor and, finally, a partner when it merged with the NFL in 1970. He chronicled the league as it evolved into America's pre-eminent sporting institution. He has covered all 35 Super Bowls and saw his hometown team play in it four consecutive times.

By the end of the 1960s, Felser was a national figure in the sports media; he was a respected weekly voice in The Sporting News for a quarter century. But through it all, he remained at heart a Buffalo guy, a local treasure, an all-around good person who never changed and never lost sight of his roots.

***

People in Buffalo don't know just how good they've had it all these years, to have a giant like Larry Felser come up in their midst and spend his entire professional life here.

It's a good thing they don't use those old typewriters anymore, because it's pretty clear that none of us could carry his.
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Sully today: Larry Felser, a gentleman

Chuck Knox once said of Larry, "They don't make them like him anymore." That was so true. He was one of a kind, the product of a kinder and simpler era in sports journalism. He carried himself with a quiet dignity. Athletes trusted him. So did readers. At a time when people tweet their thoughts without filters and everyone wants to be the smartest guy in the room, it would be wise to remember Larry and journalists like him, who spent a day reporting and polishing a column that people read as if it were gospel.

Rest in peace, Larry. We all looked up to you as a role model. Not as just a great writer, but even more important as a great guy.
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Michael_ Gee · Apr 25, 2013

Larry was a wonderful person to know. This is very sad news.

Drip · Apr 25, 2013

RIP to a Buffalo legend.

LanceyHoward · Apr 26, 2013

I remember when I fell in love with pro football in the late 60's just about the only preview magazine out there was Smith and Street. Larry Felser wrote the AFL and Bob Oates the NFL. Through adolescene my journalistic heros were those two, Tex Maule of SI, Paul Zimmerman and Brent Musberger, who worked at a Chicago paper and wrote the best Pro Football Weekly column. In those days there were not many guys with national exposure so those guys were basically the national pro football press corps for a kid.

micropolitan guy · Dec 15, 2014

A giant in WNY. I also read once he's in the iconic Joe Namath pool shot, but I'm not exactly sure which guy he is.

Riptide · Apr 26, 2013

LanceyHoward said:

I remember when I fell in love with pro football in the late 60's just about the only preview magazine out there was Smith and Street. Larry Felser wrote the AFL and Bob Oates the NFL. Through adolescene my journalistic heros were those two, Tex Maule of SI, Paul Zimmerman and Brent Musberger, who worked at a Chicago paper and wrote the best Pro Football Weekly column. In those days there were not many guys with national exposure so those guys were basically the national pro football press corps for a kid.
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Musburger.

Liut · Apr 26, 2013

Thank you for posting the tributes, Pseudo. Indeed, may Mr. Felser RIP.

CarlSpackler · Apr 29, 2013

I had the opportunity to interview Larry for a story I did last year on a mid-60s Bills star, Tom Sestak. He couldn't have been more gracious, helpful or quotable. It was one of those conversations where you hang up and wonder "Was I just on the phone for 20 minutes, 45 minutes or an hour and a half?"

That story just won an award a couple weeks ago, yet I can't help but think it was more because of Felser's quotes than anything I came up with myself. He made me a better writer without even knowing it. I think that's the kind of impact all of us aspire to have.

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RIP, Larry Felser

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RIP, Larry Felser

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