Favorite assignment

[Mizzougrad96]

Catching punts from an All-Pro punter.
Fun as hell to write and much harder than it looks.
There are so many minute aspects to the game that require immense natural skill.

Yeah, I've caught passes from two Hall-of-Fame QBs and two more who will eventually get in.

Twice, I was helping during photo shoots early in my career. Once, I was standing near a target that a QB was trying to hit after practice (I was waiting to interview him) and I was catching ones he missed. The other one, we were actually throwing the ball around at his house.

 

[Andy Friedlander]

I've been around a long time, so I have a number of them.

A guy named Leonard King used to run a free agent camp in Atlanta after the draft. Basically, it was a low-budget open tryout camp for any wannabe NFL player, but because King had contacts in the league -- his claim to fame was discovering Alfred Jenkins, who turned into a good receiver for the Falcons in the 1970s -- some of the teams would send scouts, so it had some legitimacy (the catch was players had to sign an agreement saying King would be their agent if they signed with an NFL team). One year, I did a feature on this camp that ended up going something like 80 inches -- we split it up and ran it over two days. It was awesome (the event, not the story). Everyone had a story. There were a bunch of ex-college players -- some pretty good ones -- along with bartenders, truck drivers, a nightclub DJ, etc. The best part was hanging around the scouts while the drills were going on, listening to their banter and their take on who was an actual prospect and who wasn't, and of course, hearing their comments on the guys who had no business being there. The story turned out good, but the experience was tremendous.

My first Super Bowl was an eye-opening experience in more ways than one -- it was the year the riots broke out in Miami during SB week.

My favorite long-term story to cover was the Carolinas NFL expansion bid. The Richardsons and their people -- Mike McCormack, Max Muhleman, etc. -- were tremendous to work with, and the saga had all sorts of twists and turns over about a five-year span between when I started covering it and the Panthers started playing. Plus, I broke my share of stories while competing with the big guns of the Charlotte Observer, which made it even more fun. Among the highlights were going to Jerry Richardson's house in Spartanburg, S.C. and seeing his trophy room/shrine to Johnny Unitas and the Colts, and the time I had an interview scheduled with Richardson and he asked me if I wanted to go get something to eat. He took me to the Hardees on Kennedy Street in Spartanburg -- his first store, the one he bought with his NFL championship bonus money -- where I watched a billionaire chowing down on whatever the latest Hardees burger creation was at the time with the rest of us.

Someone earlier mentioned to Penn Relays. I covered a lot of track over the years, and Penn had by far the greatest atmosphere, thanks in part to all the Jamaicans in the stands. It remains the only sporting event I've ever been to where jerk chicken was sold at the concession stands.

Working the ACC tournament was always very cool to me, moreso than the NCAAs because the fans were so into it. But probably the best college basketball game I ever saw was Georgia Tech's victory over LSU in the 1990 NCAA tournament -- Lethal Weapon 3 vs. Chris Jackson, Shaq and Stanley Roberts. And covering Bobby Cremins was an absolute treat.

I got a chance to cover the Masters twice, and that was a tremendous experience. Augusta National might be the most beautiful place I've ever seen in person. And it didn't hurt that my first Masters was 1986, when Nicklaus charged from behind to win at age 46. The crowd was deafening. In fact, the lede for my story was, "The crowd roared Sunday at Augusta National. But the Bear roared louder." Still probably my favorite lede of anything I've done.

I also love stories that involve collecting tales from old-timers. My favorite was a piece on 1950s NFL linebacker Hardy Brown that I put together for the Star-Telegram's Sports Century series in 1999. I talked to Otto Graham, Pat Summerall, Glenn Davis, Y.A. Tittle and a bunch of other guys who played back then, and all of them had great stories. It was tons of fun. The only problem was a miscommunication -- I thought my story was going to be the cover feature, but it was actually an inside feature, which had considerably less space, so I had to cut it down severely. I kept a copy of the longer version, which I really, really liked, and actually sent it out with my clips for awhile (with an explanation of what had happened).

 

[albert77]

A few more memorable or off-the-wall assignments I've had in a 30-year career in the business:

Interviewing Charlie Conerly, who was extremely gracious.

Catching Don Sutton, who was in town to watch his son play college ball. I asked him if his rep for doctoring baseballs during his playing career was true. He grinned and said, "no comment."

Tim Brando, who was in town to address a high school scholar-athlete luncheon, gave me the best interview of my life. I ask for five minutes, he gave me 20 and we talked about all sorts of subjects.

A backyard rassling competition out in the sticks. These folks had rented a rink and everything. An absolute hoot.

A state semifinal basketball game in which a kid from a local team banked in a 65-foot prayer at the buzzer to win it.

 

[Walter Burns]

In no order but chronological:
1. The Super Bowl of Horseshoe Pitching. I was 19 and the low man on the totem pole at the sports department. Since my duties usually included the Saturday night DQ run, I jumped at the chance to write ANYTHING. "I got the Super Bowl of Horseshoe Pitching." It was on a Saturday morning at a VFW. There were 10 horseshoe pits and a bar. I split my time between the two. I got raves over the story.
2. I got to interview John Glenn. "Oh, he's a corrupt senator," one of my co-workers said. "Any idiot can get elected senator," I replied (We were in Pennsylvania, which at the time was represented by Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum. I rest my case). John Glenn's telling me stories about flying jets in Korea with Ted Williams and I have to restrain myself from saying, "DUDE, YOU WERE IN OUTER ****ING SPACE!!"
3. I interviewed a 90-year-old fire academy instructor. He was a volunteer fireman and instructor for longer than he actually worked his real job, and he. was. hysterical. It's amazing how the good stories can be so easy to write.

 

[spikechiquet]

My memory sucks.
I've been in this biz for nearly 20 years and not one assignment jumps out at me.

A few were not assignments, but I was there because of work:
- Meeting the 1991 college hockey champs at their 10-year reunion. They were gods to me as a 8th grader.
- Watching a high school intern go from being a back-up right fielder for an American Legion team to seeing him ump 2nd base last week at Miller Park as a major league ump, the dream he told me he wanted 14 years ago as a senior in high school.
- Seeing a co-worker naked...and now she is sort of famous.
- Meeting bands and artists I respect, and just having chill time with them. Not just interviews, but having a conversation and exchanging ideas.
- Brett Favre asking if I wanted to sit down and have breakfast with him before a playoff game (and I HATE Favre, but he was nice enough)

 

[SixToe]

Of all the cool things I've covered, photographing fires and wrecks for the weekly newspaper I started at many years ago ranks among my favorite times. I knew the cops and fire department guys in the small town and had pretty liberal access.

 

[HejiraHenry]

Taking this thread title literally, I was assigned to made a radio show appearance on behalf of The Big National Paper at the U.S. Olympic Festival in the Twin Cities in 1990.

The host was Ray Scott.

The show was fun, but sitting with a colleague and drinking while Ray spun out some of his favorite tales for a couple hours after was a highlight.

 

[RedHotChiliPrepper]

A Division II game in the early '80s between Bloomsburg and West Chester. Final play, Bloomsburg's down 4 and on its own 30. The QB scrambles back to his 10, up to the 29 and throws the ball 80 yards in the air into the belly of a walk-on freshman receiver against the end line. First time I'd ever heard a crowd drop into stunned silence for 2-3 seconds before exploding.

Was it Jay DeDea who was the QB for Bloomsburg? He was my seventh grade english teacher.

 

[RedHotChiliPrepper]

My favorite interview was with former AP boxing and horse racing writer Ed Schuyler Jr. a couple years ago. Ed's been a friend of mine for the better part of 10 years, and he's got some great stories to tell about covering the golden age of each sport. I write columns every year on the Triple Crown races for amateur handicappers and when I'll Have Another was going for the Triple Crown I called Ed and asked if he wanted to sit and talk about Secretariat and Affirmed and why it was so hard to win the Triple Crown.

I pulled up to his house about 10 minutes after it was announced I'll Have Another wasn't going to run the Belmont. I got out of the car and Ed says, "Well, your story just went to ****" with that cackling laugh of his. He told me about when Secretariat was running the Belmont how even the guys on press row were standing and cheering and he said "I was still in my seat. I was waiting for that big red son of a ***** to fall over." It's just classic Ed, a guy who isn't one to bite his tongue about anything. He's a brash man, but a great man who was a great story-teller and a great writer who definitely came from the old school. We must have talked for 2 hours that day. I must have said 5 times I think we're good and he'd come up with another story to tell that was gold.

 

[Batman]

Another fun one I had was when a bunch of old athletes from the segregation-era black high school got together to buy some championship rings they never received 40 years earlier. The school was an absolute powerhouse in basketball and football in the 1960s. Several football coaches went on to have long and successful careers in the SWAC.
One of the former players was the football coach at the current high school in town, so he put the word out that we were doing a story and got a bunch of people to come to the fieldhouse for a group interview. Over the course of 90 minutes, probably a dozen guys wandered in and out, telling stories and reminiscing. I might have asked five questions the whole time. The rest of the time, I was taking notes and listening. Those are always the best interviews, the ones that steer themselves.

Some of the stuff they talked about was fascinating, too. The black high school's teams were so good at the time, and the white schools kind of mediocre, so the black school was THE game to watch every week. Black people would be in the stands and white people had to stand outside the stadium, watching through the fence.
They also talked about the black and white high school players getting together for pick-up games on Sundays, and how it helped make the town better than most in the state in terms of race relations. By all accounts, we never had the sort of tension and violence here that you had in other areas.
Most interesting, though, was how some of them were actually upset when integration came in the early 70s. The black high school had excelled in almost everything. Its sports teams were great, one of its graduates went to Harvard, and it had a reputation for strong academics and for putting out good people. There was a lot of pride in what they'd built. When integration came, and the black school closed, they felt like they lost something special.

 

[jr/shotglass]

A Division II game in the early '80s between Bloomsburg and West Chester. Final play, Bloomsburg's down 4 and on its own 30. The QB scrambles back to his 10, up to the 29 and throws the ball 80 yards in the air into the belly of a walk-on freshman receiver against the end line. First time I'd ever heard a crowd drop into stunned silence for 2-3 seconds before exploding.

Was it Jay DeDea who was the QB for Bloomsburg? He was my seventh grade english teacher.

You betcha.

 

[flexmaster33]

I just remembered another fun one...a feature on a local boxer, which ended with me and our photographer getting into the ring for a round of sparring.

 

[joe]

The Fifth Down Game.

Chaos during and after.

The Fifth Down game!

Drunk before, during and after. No Missourian for me that day.

 

[Cosmo]

Favorite was in 2006. Covered the Greater Greensboro Open, but not in the traditional sense. My boss sent me down for the Monday and Wednesday pro-ams to do a story on caddies. The catch was that I was actually caddying the pro-ams. The Monday was the lower-money day, and I got paired with a younger guy and grinder Neal Lancaster, who gave me some interesting anecdotes of caddies past.

On Wednesday, I got an older gentleman who was a little more demanding, but still nice enough. I helped him get a couple of birdies with great green reads, which makes sense, since putting is one of the few things I can really do well on the golf course. The big thrill was our pro: Bernhard Langer. I spent 10 minutes with him after the round gabbing about caddy stories, and he told me one about how he fired one of his caddies in the 80s and the guy responded by coming at him with a knife. Also talked to a couple of the caddies who lurk around the clubhouse during the early part of the week, looking for work. Turned out to be a great Sunday package. Plus, hell, I got to walk 18 with a freaking Masters champ, so there was that.

 

[bigbadeagle]

Went to Kuwait before the 2003 invasion. Spent a week with the troops out in the desert. Guy in the next tent asks how my nephew was. His wife and my youngest sister were best friends in high school. Aside from that, an incredible week of work and experiences, from the prolonged trip out there to being out there on the frontier just a few miles from the Iraqi border. Later, I was there to greet some of those guys as they came home. So many of them thanked me for telling their stories.
Everything else has paled by comparison.

 

[WriteThinking]

Went to Kuwait before the 2003 invasion. Spent a week with the troops out in the desert. Guy in the next tent asks how my nephew was. His wife and my youngest sister were best friends in high school. Aside from that, an incredible week of work and experiences, from the prolonged trip out there to being out there on the frontier just a few miles from the Iraqi border. Later, I was there to greet some of those guys as they came home. So many of them thanked me for telling their stories.
Everything else has paled by comparison.

I'll bet. Were you an embedded reporter?

 

[Morris816]

Two spring to mind:

1. When covering the high school state basketball tournament one year, I had four teams in my coverage area get to state and each of the teams had players who were siblings, and others who had siblings who previously played on state hoops teams. Turned out to be even better than I thought, because the school that sent its boys and girls teams to state had more family relations than I realized -- it seemed half the kids were brothers, sisters or cousins. On top of that, all four teams I covered reached the state title game, so it turned into one of the best sports packages I ever did.

2. We got a news tip from a reader outside our area about Arian Foster. The reader mentioned that Arian's mother grew up in one of the communities we covered and Arian still had relatives living in the area. Talked to those relatives first, then Arian's mother, and they were all gracious. Arian's mother gave me her son's cell number, and when I called him, I could tell he was surprised at first that somebody from Podunk would call him. But after I explained things to him, he was very gracious and I got some great quotes from the guy.

 

[canucklehead]

Kind of an assignment. Goes all the way back to my first reporting gig at my hometown weekly. Reporters used to take turns bringing police scanner home. My dad would get mad when I didn't so I started keeping it with me all the time. It was a small town and he knew every name that came across it. Whenever there was a fire call he and I would jump into the car and chase the fire truck. Got some great photos. Eventually just got him his own for Christmas. He's not around anymore.

 

[JordanA]

I've had a couple. As a lifelong NASCAR fan, when Kevin Harvick came to our town to appear at an Ollie's opening, getting to interview him was a highlight. I also spent a couple of days with a late model race team from nearby -- one at the shop, one at the track -- for an enterprise piece I was pretty proud of. Getting to go hang out at the race track and write about it was definitely a highlight.

Probably the other story that was the most fun was breaking a story when I was with my college newspaper. My college (East Carolina) was apparently not going to have its stadium updated on the latest NCAA Football game. I contacted EA Sports, and fully expected to be given the runaround since I was just a kid at a college paper. Instead, I got to talk directly with a producer who gave me the story about how the stadium would be upgraded and what exactly goes into the process. It's probably the story I'm most proud of in my career, and was a large part of why I got my first job out of college.

 

[Liut]

Kind of an assignment. Goes all the way back to my first reporting gig at my hometown weekly. Reporters used to take turns bringing police scanner home. My dad would get mad when I didn't so I started keeping it with me all the time. It was a small town and he knew every name that came across it. Whenever there was a fire call he and I would jump into the car and chase the fire truck. Got some great photos. Eventually just got him his own for Christmas. He's not around anymore.

Neat story. Thanks for sharing.