An excerpt from my latest sports journalism column for Poynter.

*******

Kevin Sullivan’s vast career in public relations has taken him from the NBA to NBC to the White House. Sports always have been a focal point, even for the most important job interview of his life.

In 2006, Sullivan was recommended to serve as the communications director for George Bush. However, he still had to pass the test in meeting the president.

Sullivan knew Bush, a former owner of the Texas Rangers, was a big sports fan. So he was ready when the president asked, “Where are you from?”

“Chicago, sir. White Sox, not Cubs,” said Sullivan, a native of Chicago’s South Side.

Sullivan obviously had the credentials, but the sports connection helped seal the deal. He then had a front row seat in the White House through the end of Bush’s second term.

Sullivan writes about that experience and more in a new e-book, “Breaking Through: Communications Lessons from the Locker Room, Boardroom and White House.” After leaving Washington, he opened his own strategic communications firm, advising a mix of corporations, sports teams and leagues. He also continues to work for the former president, serving as a communication consultant for the Bush Presidential Center.

Sullivan’s book offers his perspective and advice to PR professionals on how to survive in the new media landscape. He has seen it all in a career in which he served in PR roles with the Dallas Mavericks, NBC Sports, NBC Universal along with working in the White House. Naturally, the sports angle pops up frequently throughout the book.

“In Washington, a lot of conversations start by talking about your favorite team,” Sullivan said.

In an interview, Sullivan notes the PR similarities between the sports and political worlds.

“Sports is a tremendous training ground to work in any field,” Sullivan said. “In sports, it is about information and access, just like in the White House. There’s the pressure to break stories.

“In sports, passions run high. It’s the best part of working in sports. The same is true about Washington…[Reporters who cover sports and politics] both understand they are covering something that is important to people.”

My latest column for the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana.

*******

I mean, incredibly dumb.

After 12 years of a highly successful tenure at ESPN, Cowherd leaves on the lowest note possible. He was taken off the air before he could deliver a true good-bye on his last show.

In case you missed it, Cowherd got in all sorts of trouble for uttering this statement Thursday:

“You don’t think a general manager can manage? Like it’s impossible? The game is too complex? I’ve never bought into that, ‘Baseball’s just too complex.’ Really? A third of the sport is from the Dominican Republic.”

Immediately, the politically-incorrect alarm sounded throughout Bristol. It gets quite a workout these days.

The ESPN PR department went to Defcon 1 in anticipation of the inevitable flak storm coming its way. Sure enough, it was considerable with Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association each condemning the remark.

ESPN didn’t waste any time. With Cowherd already out the door and headed for Fox Sports, the network said he was done at ESPN Friday. The statement read:

“Colin Cowherd’s comments over the past two days do not reflect the values of ESPN or our employees. Colin will no longer appear on ESPN.”

It was a relatively easy decision for ESPN. If the guy is leaving anyway, why does the network need to give him air time to essentially plug his next gig?

Phil Mushnick of the New York Post wrote:

“Had Cowherd instead just re-upped, he’d have been slapped with ESPN’s usual one- or two-week suspension for impolitic speech, a la Stephen A. Smith, Tony Kornheiser and Britt ‘I’m On the News, Sweetheart’ McHenry.”

ESPN, though, did let Cowherd on the air Friday morning, giving him the opportunity to explain himself. Interestingly, the ESPN.com post that said Cowherd was done at the network included a video of his quasi-mea culpa.

Cowherd tried to maintain that his quote was taken out of context. He said his larger point was that you don’t need to be a genius to play baseball. Cowherd maintained the game is infinitely easier to understand than football.

Then Cowherd offered an explanation for the Dominican Republic reference:

“For the record, I used the Dominican Republic because they furnish baseball with so many great players. But they do rank 122nd out of 144 countries in primary education according to the World Economic Forum Global Competitive Report. Nobody says everybody’s anything. And I understand when you mention a specific country, they get offended. I get it. I do. And for that, I feel bad. I do.’’

Indeed, Cowherd admitted that he was “clunky” in his phrasing. He said he shouldn’t have cited one particular country in making his point.

Do you think?

Cowherd tried to pass off his remark by saying occasionally he makes some “cringe-worthy” statements. He certainly does, but his Dominican Republic comment blows past cringe-worthy and right to flat-out stupid.

You can’t be on radio and imply that players from a certain country lack intelligence. It is stereotyping at its worst.

Yes, many Latin American players did not benefit from the quality of education that is available in the United States. However, during my days as a White Sox beat writer for the Chicago Tribune, I encountered many of them who were extremely intelligent. If you think it is easy to come to a new country where you don’t speak the language, try it some time.

Cowherd should have known better. He shouldn’t be upset if he believes his statement got taken out of context. He allowed it to happen.

It cost him the chance to go out at ESPN in a dignified way.

An excerpt from my latest sports journalism column for Poynter:

******

Tom Gage is struggling to describe the weirdest year of his life. At one point, he just blurts out, “It’s been very awkward.”

Finally, Gage sums up his wildly divergent emotions.

“I would wish this on everybody,” Gage said. “And I would wish it on nobody.”

Saturday, Gage will experience the pinnacle of his career when he accepts the J.G. Taylor Spink Award during induction weekend at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. It is the ultimate honor for a baseball writer, marking his quality coverage of the Detroit Tigers since 1979. Gage’s name will reside on a plaque in the Hall that features previous Spink winners such as Ring Lardner, Grantland Rice, Red Smith, Shirley Povich, and Peter Gammons.

Gage recalled he was stunned when he received the call informing him of the award last December.

“I had to sit down,” Gage said. “My first thought was I was surprised they called the guy who didn’t win.”

Yet Gage’s big moment comes at a time when he is out of a job for the first time in more than 45 years. Despite covering the Tigers for 36 years for the Detroit News, the paper decided to take its Hall of Fame baseball writer off the beat in 2015.

Gage, 67, still wanted to cover baseball. So he left the News to join FoxSports.com in Detroit in time for opening day. However, the new job lasted only a few months, as Fox decided to get rid of its regional reporters throughout the country.

The whole situation has left Gage’s head spinning.

“I’ve had so many people say, ‘What on Earth happened?’” Gage said.

OK, maybe it isn’t that bad. However, it appears as if John Skipper is toning down ESPN’s money-making machine.

With Bill Simmons gone and the pending of departures of Keith Olbermann and Colin Cowherd, ESPN clearly is reviewing its fiscal obligations when it comes to spending big money for big talent.

From Richard Sandomir of the New York Times:

While different factors contributed to their departures, they come at a time when ESPN is coping with rising production costs and soaring rights fees. ESPN paid $7.3 billion for the college football playoff, which made its debut earlier this year, and $15.2 billion for National Football League rights.

In each of the last four quarters, those big investments cut into operating profits of the cable networks division at the Walt Disney Company.

And, like other cable networks, ESPN is losing subscribers as customers leave their pay-TV providers and seek out unbundled viewing options like Netflix.

And there’s this passage:

Mark Shapiro, a former ESPN executive vice president, said it was coincidental that the three stars’ contracts were expiring as ESPN was “likely evolving its cost strategy in a climate of escalating rights fees and challenging margins, which is smart.”

Mr. Shapiro, now the chief content officer at IMG, added: “Only must-have talent will get the big-ticket deals, and the definition of must-have is shrinking.”

Who is or is not “must-have” can be seen in the divergent fates of Mr. Olbermann and Stephen A. Smith, co-host of “First Take,” the morning debate show on ESPN2. In the second quarter this year, the audience for Mr. Olbermann’s program was 147,000 viewers — not enough to induce ESPN to keep him. But over the same period, the audience for “First Take” averaged 387,000, and Mr. Smith recently signed a deal worth about $3 million a year.

Meanwhile, Matt Yoder of Awful Announcing has this perspective.

For the last two years, ESPN and President John Skipper seemed to stray away from that strategy by splashing the cash for the likes of Olbermann and Whitlock and Beadle to come back.  There were also a number of big dollar contracts dished out to keep the likes of Chris Fowler, Rece Davis, Jay Bilas, Kirk Herbstreit, Scott Van Pelt, and others in the fold.  But now with ESPN given a mandate from on high at Disney to slash costs everywhere at the network, Bristol will return to a tried and true mantra: nobody is bigger than the four letters.

Ever since ESPN became the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in sports, ESPN’s biggest star wasn’t a SportsCenter anchor or a radio host or a game announcer.  ESPN’s biggest star was ESPN.  The network was the biggest draw and nobody dare try to let their own starpower compete with it.

When Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick turned the 11 PM ET edition of SportsCenter into The Big Show, the pairing became a cultural phenomenon.  How did ESPN react?  After Olbermann and Patrick each left the network, ESPN no longer put established pairings together for SportsCenter lest they create the same chemistry and success that Olbermann and Patrick did.  If I can put my Darren Rovell hat on for a moment, because it wasn’t about the individual, it was about the brand.

An excerpt from my latest column for Poynter.

******

Dejan Kovacevic seemed to have everything in place. He was front and center in a passionate sports town as the lead columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He had stability for his family with a nice salary and benefits.

Then last July, Kovacevic walked away from all of it to launch his own website. Even he jokes about the audacity of such a move in today’s precarious media environment.

“I had a momentary lapse of reason,” Kovacevic said.

Actually, Kovacevic, 48, had a vision that there was a better way for him to cover the Pittsburgh sports scene. Thus far, it is hard to argue with the results.

His site, DKonPittsburghSports, will hit its one-year anniversary with nearly 14,000 subscribers; he says they pay an average of $20 per year. He says the site also earns another $60,000 per year from sponsors.

Given the current growth, Kovacevic hopes to reach 20,000 subscribers by the end of 2015. He does the math and it comes to potential annual revenue of nearly $500,000.

“That’s a lot of money,” said Kovacevic, sounding almost surprised at that figure.

The money is more than enough for him to hire full-time Pirates and Penguins beat reporters for his site, and he is looking for someone to cover the Steelers. He adds he is paying “newspaper-level wages” for those positions.

Kovacevic, though, is the main attraction. He built a following with more than 20 years of covering sports in Pittsburgh. In 2011, he placed among the top 4 columnists in the Associated Press Sports Editors contest.

Kovacevic says he enjoyed working for newspapers, but he thought the future was elsewhere.

“Doing a site had been in my head for a long time,” Kovacevic said. “More than anything, it was the frustration with newspapers over their inability, slash, ignorance, slash, and unwillingness with how to deal with the needs and wants of their readers.”

An excerpt of my latest column for Poynter:

*******

Bob Ley boils down the essence of “Outside The Lines.”

“Let’s go commit some journalism,” Ley said.

There isn’t another show on sports television — and few others in television, period — that can match ESPN’s crown jewel when it comes to committing quality journalism on a regular basis. “Outside the Lines,” also known as OTL, will celebrate its 25th anniversary Tuesday with a one-hour special on ESPN at 7 p.m. ET.

Ley, who was the anchor for the first OTL on May 7, 1990, admits the landmark anniversary caught him by surprise.

“A bunch of us were sitting around and we went, ‘Holy crap, we’ve been doing this for 25 years,’” Ley said. “They cleared out an hour in primetime for us to do a show. The task has been uplifting and unfortunate because it’s been impossible to decide what to put in.”

OTL initially was conceived by former ESPN executive John Walsh as a periodic special to allow the network to take what Ley calls “a deep dive” into subjects that go beyond the playing field. The first show examined the obstacles athletes face in adjusting to life after retirement.

In 2000, OTL became a regular staple on Sunday mornings and now also airs Monday through Friday at 5:30 p.m. on ESPN2. Quite simply, it is consistently the best program on ESPN. There are numerous days when other outlets are required to react to a story “first reported by ‘Outside The Lines.’”

In lauding OTL’s anniversary, ESPN president John Skipper called Ley, “The Walter Cronkite of sports journalism.” Ley found that platitude to be “extremely humbling.”

However, a more apt comparison for Ley and OTL might be to the vintage heyday of Ted Koppel on ABC’s “Nightline.” On most days, the show gives an intense examination to one or two subjects.

Many of those shows have dealt with issues that detail the profound impact of sports on our culture: Sexual abuse, PEDs, racial issues, to name a few. For instance, Sunday’s show featured an excellent follow-up report from John Barr on the plight of former Rutgers basketball coach Mike Rice, who was fired after OTL did a show in 2013 revealing videos that exposed his questionable coaching practices.

“It’s not highlights and it’s not sexy sometimes,” said OTL producer David Brofsky. “Plenty of our topics are ones you won’t see other shows ever touching. We’re going to do those stories because they are important, and we’re going to do them well.”

An excerpt of my latest column for Poynter:

*******

The passage of time doesn’t do justice to the greats of sports journalism. Their vast works tend to get forgotten in the new media world, where today and tomorrow seem paramount. Who needs yesterday?

So many thanks to The Library of America and Bill Littlefield for reviving the brilliance of W.C. Heinz in a new book, “The Top of His Game.” Littlefield, the host of NPR’s “Only A Game,” selected the best  columns and stories from one of the best sportswriters of all time.

A noted columnist in New York during the ‘40s, Heinz became a freelance writer in the ’50s, pioneering long-form sports articles for magazines. When David Halberstam served as guest editor in 1999 for “The Best American Sports Writing of the Century,” he included three of Heinz’s stories. Nobody else had more than two.

To learn more about Heinz, who initially made a name for himself as a correspondent during World War II, check out the New York Times obituary when he passed away at the age of 93 in 2008. Buried is this passage:

“Mr. Heinz collaborated with a physician from Maine, H. Richard Hornberger, who had been struggling to write of his experiences in the Korean War. Their novel, written under the pseudonym Richard Hooker, was “M*A*S*H” (1968).”

Indeed, Heinz was a tremendous talent. For Littlefield, the new book shows how his sports stories stand the test of time.

“The main reason to put out a book like this is for people to become acquainted for the first time with writing that is as strong and evocative now as it was in 1949,” Littlefield said. “Bill had an unbelievable ear and a magnificent ability of bringing people to life. That never fades.”

An excerpt of my latest column for Poynter on Bob Ryan:

*******

Ryan also struck an immediate bond with Larry Bird. John Havlicek asked him to assist on his autobiography. He calls Dave Cowens “the most interesting character I ever encountered in sports.” The former Boston center asked Ryan to help write his retirement announcement.

Ryan immersed himself in the beat by closely monitoring practices and expanding his education over discussions with players and coaches. He earned their credibility and respect. He treasures a statement in which Bird once said, “Bob Ryan could be a coach.”

“Baseball and basketball are my passions,” Ryan said. “I’ve always felt very comfortable in that world. I always was able to convey an enthusiasm and an eagerness to listen and learn. I couldn’t get enough.”

Another key, Ryan said, was doing his homework in getting to know the people he covered.

“I always was well-versed on their backgrounds,” Ryan said. “I tried to ask question that reflect that. It is a way to open the door. This information is available to everyone. Frankly, I don’t think everyone does it.”

Ryan also added another essential element to his success.

“The secret is to cover good teams,” Ryan said.

Indeed, it helped Ryan immensely that several of the Celtics teams he covered were among the best in NBA history. In his 2014 autobiography “Scribe,” Ryan admitted that he always wanted those teams to win.

Ryan took some heat for that perspective since it is a sharp disconnect with the sportswriter mantra of “no cheering in the press box.” Sports Illustrated even said Ryan “blurred the line between fan and journalist.”

Ryan insists that’s not the case. He just feels better teams produce more compelling stories.

“I don’t understand why (beat writers) don’t want their teams to win,” Ryan said. “Life is better when the team is winning. I don’t believe there is such a thing as being objective. Everyone writes subjectively. It’s about the fairness in everything you right. That’s what matters: Being fair.”

My latest column for the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana.

*******

I covered 12 U.S. Opens for the Chicago Tribune, and I came away with a headache from each one.

The cranky level always is at the highest levels. The five-hour-plus rounds leave everyone drained. The players are perpetually ticked off with the United States Golf Association’s wacky set-up. It wasn’t just last week at Chambers Bay. Check out the complaints from the first U.S. Open at Bethpage in 2002 and when the USGA lost the greens at Shinnecock in 2004.

As for the press, the logistics usually are challenging, and we live in constant fear of having to cover a Monday playoff. I imagine the press room delivered the biggest cheer at Chambers Bay when Dustin Johnson missed that putt at 18 Sunday.

It isn’t just the players and media. The U.S. Open also has viewers reaching for Tylenol. It’s just that kind of tournament.

From that perspective, Fox Sports really had no chance in airing its first U.S. Open. No matter what the network did, the transition from 20 years of the NBC’s coverage wasn’t going to be met fondly.

The reaction was the equivalent of Joe Buck and Greg Norman standing in the middle of the driving range with no protection. Prior to the tournament, I told Fox Sports officials to stay away from social media. I hope they heeded my advice, because it wasn’t pretty.

A few samples:

@breitwieser:  People are very divided on Fox Sports coverage of the U.S Open. Some people hated it and others truly hated it.

‏@Sskoneki: Can we start a kickstarter account to buy the U.S. Open from Fox and give it back to NBC?

@iveyjanette_207: Jim McKay,Pat Summerall and Henry Longhurst are all turning in their graves right now…Fox’s U.S. Open coverage is #brutal.

Now was Fox’s coverage that bad? No. Can it be improved? OH, YES.

For starters, Buck and Norman were fine. I know people like to dump on Buck, but he generally did a good job directing traffic and setting the stage.

Norman, meanwhile, delivers that big-name presence to the telecasts. He’s “The Shark,” after all, and I found myself interested in what he had to say. He wasn’t Johnny Miller, but he offered some illuminating perspectives.

As for the other commentators, I liked to talk to Brad Faxon as a player. So naturally, I liked him in the booth. Corey Pavin also was better than I expected, given he was really dry as the 2010 U.S. Ryder Cup captain.

The biggest complaint I had, as did others, is that too often I had no idea who was talking beyond Buck and Norman. These are new voices and Fox needed to do a better job of identifying its announcers.

From a gizmo standpoint, many of the new graphics, including the distances and tracers, were nice additions. The score bug in the right corner seems so logical, it is hard to believe nobody has done it before. The amped-up sound picked up Jordan Spieth on Friday proclaiming the 18th hole as a par 4 was “dumbest hole I’ve ever played.” That became a story, perhaps prompting the USGA to play the hole as a par 5 on Sunday.

However, there were more than a few bogeys. The biggest was a feeling that the overall production seemed disjointed. There were several glitches and a general lack of seamless flow that viewers have come to expect from NBC and CBS.

There were some baffling decisions on the climatic 18th hole Sunday. Instead of breaking down Dustin Johnson’s all-important second shot from the fairway, Fox inexplicably went to an interview with Louis Oosthuizen. Why? Sorry, but nobody cared about Oosthuizen at that moment. As a result, Fox quickly had to cut to Johnson as he stepped to the ball.

Also, Fox dropped the ball on Johnson’s epic miss. What happened? Why did he rush that putt? How about some replays? Oh, to have heard from Miller at that point.

There is no need to hear again from Holly Sonders or Curt Menefee on these telecasts. Sonders’ post-round interviews were painful, as she was woefully over her skis. She is going to have a tough time living down asking Jordan Spieth if he bought a fifth outfit for a possible playoff that didn’t happen.

Menefee did a poor job faking that he doesn’t know anything about golf. Fox badly needs someone like the Golf Channel’s Rich Lerner, who is well-versed in the game and its history, in the studio role.

Despite all the social media slams, Fox isn’t going anywhere. It has 11 more U.S. Opens with its USGA deal. Deal with it.

Fox will make adjustments. Telecasts evolve over time, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if the network’s coverage of the 2020 U.S. Open is markedly different from 2015.

If not, Tylenol should consider taking out ads during future U.S. Opens. Viewers will need something for those headaches.

An excerpt from my latest column for Poynter.

*******

The Dallas Morning News initially hadn’t planned to staff this week’s U.S. Open in Seattle. However, its golf writer Bill Nichols is on hand because of one reason: Jordan Spieth.

Spieth, the newly-minted Masters champion, presents the Morning News with quite a dilemma. Despite limited resources, the paper is trying to figure out how to cover a local product who is the hottest young star in golf.

“Jordan has been an interesting test case in the new world for us,” said sports editor Garry Leavell.

Leavell says his travel budget is roughly a third of what it was 5 or 6 years ago. As a result, the Morning News stopped covering golf’s majors after the Masters in 2011.

“It’s all about economics,” Leavell said.

The Morning News hardly is alone, as other newspapers have cut back on staffing majors. However, this is a huge departure for a golf-obsessed sports section that once had national golf writers staffing 15-20 tournaments per year. I can recall the Morning News had three seats in the Augusta National press room during my days covering golf for the Chicago Tribune. I was told the Morning News was “grandfathered in” when the club denied our request for a third seat for the Tribune.

The Morning News, though, wasn’t at the Masters in April when the 21-year-old Spieth donned the green jacket with a stunning performance. Leavell says he considered sending a reporter to Augusta during the weekend after Spieth jumped out to an early lead. However, the cost was prohibitive for a full-priced airfare.

Leavell went with Plan B to chronicle Spieth’s historic victory. Nichols wrote a 1-A story based on watching the tournament on TV with members at Spieth’s Dallas club. Kevin Sherrington and Barry Horn contributed columns. Leavell also hired former Washington Post golf writer, Len Shapiro, to file a story from Augusta. Add a picture page, and the Morning News had 17 columns dedicated to Spieth.

Leavell said it was an impressive package, but he knew something was missing.

“For those of us who have been around here a long time, it was painful [for a Morning News reporter or columnist] not to be there,” Leavell said. “It goes against your instincts. The writers were asking questions about it. It’s a very difficult call.”