An excerpt from my latest Chicago Tribune column:

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A prediction on Fox Sports’ coverage of its first U.S. Open:

It won’t matter if Fox produces the best Open ever. Golf fans still will complain about a lack of quality. They always complain.

This isn’t to say that Fox’s debut on major championship golf will be a disaster, although it could be. Rather, it is about the realities of a very finicky golf audience that typically isn’t receptive to change.

“Anytime something is new, some people will like it and some people won’t,” said Mark Loomis, Fox Sports’ producer for golf.

After 20 years of the U.S. Open on NBC, there will be an adjustment period to a new lineup of voices. Joe Buck and Greg Norman will be the focal points as the lead announce team. Other analysts include Tom Weiskopf, Corey Pavin, Brad Faxon and Juli Inkster.

Buck will have to prove he can navigate through a golf tournament like long-time standards Jim Nantz and Dan Hicks. If he can’t capture a cadence and tone that is much different than a baseball and football game, he will feel the wrath of golf viewers. Just ask Chris Berman, who was vilified for being out-of-place with his work for the U.S. Open on ESPN.

“Believe me, with play-by-play here, I’m going with a less-is-more approach,” Buck said.

Norman, meanwhile, will be compared to the blunt Johnny Miller, who sees no sacred cows on the course. Even though Norman often was on the receiving end of a Miller critique, he says he is a fan of the NBC analyst.

“When you are in the seat of lead analyst, you have to give your opinion,” Norman said. “It can’t be sugar-coated. It irks me when I watch TV and every player hits the perfect shot and every player is the greatest short game player in the world and every player is just so good. When you look at it in totality, these players are the best in the world, but when they do do something wrong, it’s got to be pointed out.”

I’m pretty sure if there was an announcement that the world was about to end, it would occur on a Friday afternoon in the hopes nobody would notice.

ESPN executed the perfect Friday afternoon news dump when it disclosed that Jason Whitlock is out as the head of “The Undefeated” just weeks before its launch.

Clearly, something happened to knock out Whitlock from the African-American-based site that was conceived with him as the standard bearer. I have a hard time believing the release’s statement that ESPN and Whitlock “collectively decided to make some structural adjustments that will maximize the skill sets and strengths of our team, leading to the best possible output for the site and for all of ESPN.”

I’m not buying that notion that Whitlock took one for the team. This is a major embarrassment for someone of his stature, not to mention ego.

Greg Howard’s massive takedown of Whitlock on Deadspin was damning to say the least. Yet that story was published on April 27.

ESPN didn’t make a move back then. In fact, it seemed all systems appeared to be go when Tom Hoffarth of the Los Angeles Daily News wrote a big piece on Whitlock and the site on May 30.

The story contains this passage:

His riposte appears to be transparency. As the editor-in-chief and full-frontal embodiment of this project de rigueur, conceived two years ago and perhaps ready to officially launch next month, when have you ever known Whitlock to play coy about something that’s got his name stamped on it?

“What we’re doing is, to me, one of the most difficult things in journalism,” the 48-year-old said this week from the province he has occupied since last September. “We’re going to be debating and discussing and analyzing race and culture. That’s a high-risk, high-reward endeavor. It requires very smart people. This isn’t going to be about writing game stories or ‘hot takes.’ It’s about actual journalism and reporting on really big issues.

 “And one thing I’ve learned in my short time as a manager and executive is hire really slow and deliberately.”

Apparently, Whitlock didn’t learn all his lessons in being an effective manager. Otherwise, he still would be running the show.

If this situation involved a coach or a general manager being ousted so close to the start of the season, Whitlock would demand an explanation for all involved. He wouldn’t settle for a press release on a Friday afternoon.

The same now holds true for Whitlock. When he writes again, he can’t do a standard sports column.

He needs to explain what happened and why he won’t be the head of “The Undefeated.” If Whitlock is all for transparency in his reporting, that has to include him.

I’m looking forward to reading that column.

An excerpt of my latest column for Poynter.org. One of the more enjoyable column I’ve done in my years of covering sports media.

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At the top of our interview, I told Mike Emrick I felt that the premium on writing has diminished in the 140-character new media age. He shares the same concerns.

“Words are the hammers and nails to build a sentence,” Emrick said. “You probably talk to young people about the value of putting together a good sentence, even a spoken one. This will sound like an old guy talking, but it is sort of a lost art.”

Emrick then told a story he heard while sitting next to a job recruiter on a plane.

“He said he talked to a young lady from Haddonfield, N.J. who ‘blew me away,’” Emrick said. “He said, ‘I asked myself why? She put together a good sentence; she made eye contact; and she had a good hand shake. I’m thinking why is that unusual?’ But he added, ‘Today, that’s unusual.’”

Emrick obviously has some natural talent, but he also needed to build a foundation. Looking back, he said it came from reading at a young age.

The short version is that Emrick recommends reading as the best method to improve writing and verbal skills. Naturally, though, he puts it in a much more colorful way.

“Reading is the No. 1 thing that builds vocabulary,” Emrick said. “Read the fun stuff, but also read something with more than a couple syllables. It’s fine to enjoy a milk shake, but also eat a good salad now and then. The milk shake may be fun, but you also need to do something that’s good for yourself.”

Emrick also talked about the importance of learning from role models in the business. In his case, it started by listening to Bob Chase, a minor league hockey announcer in Ft. Wayne who still is calling games at the age of 89. Richard Deitsch of SI.com did a story on Chase this week.

“He is so good at formulating sentences,” Emrick said. “Hearing the King’s English come out over the radio at a young age was very helpful to me.”

Later, Emrick had the good fortune of spending time with Ernie Harwell, the long-time voice of the Detroit Tigers, while researching his Ph.D dissertation. He saw how legendary announcers like Harwell and Scully use stories to connect with their audience. Emrick is big on stories, as he always tries to incorporate a few in his calls.

“I usually have five minutes of material that I have to whack down to 20 seconds,” Emrick said. “But I think the stories are the most lasting. When I listen to someone speak, usually once a week on Sunday, it is the stories that I remember. The stories are far greater than statistics. Stats are here today, gone tomorrow. I remember stories from 20-25 years ago.”

An excerpt from my latest column for the Chicago Tribune.

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NBC Sports Chairman Mark Lazarus is thrilled about the growth of hockey on NBC, but he has one request to its players: Please shave during the postseason.

Lazarus said he has lobbied the NHL and its players to end the tradition of the playoff beards. He believes the excess facial hair hurts player recognition for fans, perhaps hindering the development of new stars during the highest-rated games of the season.

“The players won’t like this, but I wish they all would stop growing beards in the postseason,” Lazarus said. “Let’s get their faces out there. Let’s talk about how young and attractive they are. What model citizens they are. (Hockey players) truly are one of a kind among professional athletes.

“I know it’s a tradition and superstition, but I think (the beards do) hurt recognition. They have a great opportunity with more endorsements. Or simply more recognition with fans saying, ‘That guy looks like the kid next store,’ which many of these guys do. I think that would be a nice thing.”

An excerpt of my latest column for Poynter.

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It isn’t every day that Jeremy Schaap gets a call from Ethel Kennedy.

Mrs. Kennedy was on the line with the good news that ESPN had won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Schaap’s “E:60” story on deplorable work conditions in Qater in preparation for the 2022 World Cup. It was the first time the network received the prestigious honor.

Kennedy’s widow was extolling the virtues of the piece during their conversation when Schaap interrupted her.

“I said, ‘Mrs. Kennedy, I’ve got to tell you something. You knew my father,’” Schaap said.

Schaap’s father, Dick, wrote a biography, “R.F.K.”, that was published just months before Sen. Kennedy’s assassination in June, 1968. Upon hearing that piece of information, Mrs. Kennedy dropped the formal tone in her voice.

“Oh, I was hoping you were Dick’s son,” Kennedy said.

“That was very cool,” Jeremy said.

This is a good stretch for the Schaap family. While Dick, who died in 2001, would have been very proud of his son for winning the RFK Award, Jeremy has reason to boast about his father. Monday, Dick Schaap will be formally inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame in a ceremony in Salisbury, N.C.

The new Hall of Fame class also includes Lesley Visser, the long-time Boston Globe and CBS reporter. “To have a Schaap and Visser in the same class means they are very proud in Amsterdam,” Jeremy cracked.

The honor for Dick Schaap actually is way overdue. Arguably, there is nobody in the history of sports media who performed to such a high standard on more platforms than him.

Schaap was the editor of Sport Magazine and wrote 33 books, including Jerry Kramer’s “Instant Diary,” a ground-breaking diary of a year with the Green Bay Packers. On TV, he hosted ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters,” a forerunner for today’s modern studio shows, and reported on sports for ABC News.

“It’s easy for me to say because I’m biased,” Jeremy said. “But (New York Times sports columnist) Dave Anderson said it best. He said, ‘My father was the best of their generation at whatever he did.’”

An excerpt from my latest Chicago Tribune column:

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Mike Emrick never uses conventional descriptions. So while the game may be hockey, he referred to another sport in previewing the Blackhawks-Tampa Bay Stanley Cup Final.

“It’s going to be a track meet,” Emrick said. “I don’t think they’ll have the shot put or the pole vault, but the rest of the events are going to be there.”

Emrick and his NBC partner, Eddie Olczyk and Pierre McGuire, are bracing for a fast-paced and potentially high-scoring series. Olczyk has first-hand experience in playing in a series where the goal lamp got burnt out. He was with the Blackhawks in 1985, when they lost 4-2 to Edmonton in the conference final. There were 69 goals, the most ever for a semifinal and for a six-game playoff series.

“I was only a minus-4,” said Olczyk, noting that the Oilers scored 44 goals in six games.

Olczyk doesn’t anticipate the goal record will be broken, but he said if the goalies, the Blackhawks’ Corey Crawford and Tampa Bay’s Ben Bishops, are only “average,” there could be a bunch of 6-5, 7-6 games in the Final.

“Both these teams have the ability to be able to finish,” Olczyk said. “A lot of teams, a lot of players need eight, nine chances to get one goal. (Tyler) Johnson, (Steven) Stamkos, (Jonathan) Toews, (Patrick) Kane, those guys need one or two chances to score. I think both teams want to play the same way, and it’s going to lead to chances. It should be a lot of fun.”

An excerpt from my latest column for Poynter.org.

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There are countless stories of sports journalists trying to survive during these challenging economic times. Few, though, have gone literally as far as Steve Elling.

Elling thought he had a dream job in 2012. He was given a wide range of latitude in covering as many as 20 golf tournaments per year for CBSSports.com. He received a glowing job review earlier in the year.

Then a few months later, just days before he was set to depart to cover the British Open, Elling was told that his job had been eliminated.

Now what?

“I was 50-years-old covering a niche sport,” Elling said. “I wasn’t looking at a ton of options.”

Only one true option materialized for him, but it hardly could be called a dream job. In December, 2012, Elling left his wife and then 8-year-old son to take a job as a sports reporter for The National, the state-run newspaper in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. He executed his plan of staying two years before returning back to his home in Orlando last December.

“I wasn’t going to let my son have his third straight Christmas without me,” Elling said.

Elling got the job through a former Los Angeles Times colleague who now worked in the Mideast. He says it purely was an economical decision. Since there are no taxes in the UAE, Elling figures he earned the equivalent of more than $100,000 per year in terms of his overall take-home pay. It was more than he could make in the U.S., and enough to help him pay off his debts.

“I ran into Ernie Els at a [Mideast golf] tournament,” Elling said. “He said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘I’m here for the appearance fee.’ He knew exactly what I was talking about. It was all about the money.”

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

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They commanded our attention during countless autumns and winters.

There was Bob Knight and his red sweater. You watched because he was this mixture of brilliance and inexplicable, unpredictable anger. He could get his Indiana team to perform with precision, and yet he always seemed to be a split second away from tossing a chair across the court.

There was Lou Holtz, a short wisp of man of who had a dominating presence in the land of giants. During his days at Notre Dame, there wasn’t a coach in any sport who had more national TV time than Holtz. You watched because of his frenetic energy on the sidelines fueled by multiple six-packs of Diet Coke that were most definitely not caffeine free.

When their coaching days ended, both men joined ESPN: Knight in 2008 and Holtz in 2004. Their achievements and personas vaulted them quickly to the top of the network’s lineup of analysts. They still commanded our attention.

And now they’re gone. Did anyone notice?

A few weeks back, ESPN disclosed that it no longer will need the services of Knight and Holtz. The statements from the network were relatively the same.

“We thank Bob for his contributions to ESPN’s coverage over the last seven seasons and wish him luck in his future endeavors,” said John Wildhack, ESPN executive vice president, production and programming. “Coach Knight has left an indelible mark on the game of college basketball and he will be remembered as one of the truly great coaches and innovators the game has seen.”

“Lou brought a champion’s perspective and a legacy of accomplishment to our coverage along with his distinctive style and humor. We appreciate his contributions and wish him all the best in the future.”

The parting of the ways probably marks the last time Knight and Holtz will be spotlighted on a national stage. It seems unlikely that they will land at another network. If they do, it won’t be the same.

For all the noise and bluster their careers generated, news of their departures was eerily quiet. No big headlines. No litany of testimonials. Do a Google search. You’ll only find the perfunctory statements from ESPN and a few paragraphs on various websites.

The biggest reaction actually came from new Michigan Jim Harbaugh. Several weeks after the announcement, he issued a tweet about Holtz:

“Just heard Lou Holtz is no longer at ESPN Ridiculous! Saturday’s won’t be the same, Love Lou Holtz! Chris Fowler not on Game Day, Flummoxed.”

However, few other people were “flummoxed” about Knight’s and Holtz’s departure.

Age likely was a factor for the end of their broadcast careers. Holtz is 78 and he said in an interview last year that he wanted to spend more time playing golf and being with his family. That all sounds good, but he also might have known his time was up at ESPN. He and Mark May, his fellow Saturday analyst, haven’t been everyone’s favorites. Holtz could have been out anyway with an expected ESPN reshuffle for its college football coverage in the wake of Rece Davis being host of “GameDay.”

Meanwhile, the expiration date for the 74-year-old Knight should have occurred a few years back. It is perplexing that it didn’t work out better for him at ESPN.

When Knight was brought on board in 2008, ESPN’s Norby Williamson gushed to Sports Illustrated:

“He’s always been the type of person that if you were flipping through the channels and you saw him in a long-form interview or a press conference or during one of his games, you stopped and watched it. There are very few people like that. It was a fairly easy decision.”

Knight, though, wasn’t a must-watch as an analyst. After being showcased early on by ESPN, Knight saw his role reduced dramatically. This year, he did American Athletic Conference games as part of a three-man team. Matt Yoder of Awful Announcing wrote: “Knight is literally about the 837th most visible person at the network at the present moment.”

It is telling that Knight’s last telecast working for ESPN was the NIT championship game. Bob Knight doesn’t do NIT, right? Yet there he was at Madison Square Garden on the call for a game in the consolation (losers) tournament.

At the end of the telecast, Knight thanked everyone he worked with at ESPN. Then he added: “I appreciated having had the opportunity to visit with you fans over the past four years about this game that I have loved so much during my entire life. You fans, I appreciate you more than I could ever tell you. Thanks.”

Given his stature as a coach, Knight figured to make his farewell on a stage much bigger than the NIT. Things, though, doesn’t always go as planned.

As a reporter who covered both coaches in their heydays, something feels weird about saying good-bye to Knight and Holtz in this manner. These are men who still fill up the room with their presence. They won games, big games, memorable games.

Time marches on, for sure. Other coaches are getting their turns.

College sports, though, probably will never two coaches like Knight and Holtz. Given the scope of their careers and how they dominated the sporting landscape for so long, it seems inconceivable that barely anyone noticed when Bob Knight and Lou Holtz walked out the door, disappearing quietly into the night.

Excerpts from my latest column for Poynter.

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The sports front page of the April 9 edition of USA Today featured two columns from the Masters. Nancy Armour wrote about Bubba Watson, while Christine Brennan looked at the favorites for the tournament.

Think about that for a moment: Two women sports columnists being prominently displayed on by the one of the nation’s top circulation newspaper, and they were writing about the top men’s event in golf.

Did you notice?

“If people didn’t notice, that’s great,” Brennan said.

Indeed, the columns show how far women have come from the days, not that long ago, when they weren’t allowed in locker rooms. Women are read, seen and heard on various platforms in sports. It also should be noted the sports editor for that edition was Mary Byrne, who has since left the paper to join ESPN.com.

Yet that USA Today sports front, while an encouraging snapshot, doesn’t tell the entire story. Sadly in 2015, there still is a long way for women to go in sports media. In 2012, the Associated Press Sports Editors commissioned a report by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports. The grades for gender for total staff and sports editors: F. The situation hasn’t improved much since then.

The good and the bad will be discussed when the Association for Women in Sports Media launches their annual convention Saturday in Denver. The association is more commonly referred to as “awesome” based on its initials, AWSM.

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Michaelis, though, expected more progress. She called the early ’90, when she started her career, “a golden age” for women. Pioneers like Brennan and others in the ‘70s and ‘80s blew open doors for young female sportswriters like Michaelis. However, 20 years later, women still make up roughly 10 percent of overall staff for newspaper sports sections.

“If you had asked me in 1995, what would sports departments look like in 20 years, I would have said women likely would have made up 25 percent,” Michaelis said. “And that might not have been optimistic enough. It’s very distressing there hasn’t been more growth.”

My latest for the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana:

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It seems to be an unofficial mandate. Every story about George Bodenheimer has to begin with the fact that he started in the mailroom at ESPN. The mailroom reference is used so often, it almost feels as if it is his middle name.

George Mailroom Bodenheimer.

Bodenheimer himself even referred to his humble beginnings in the title of his new autobiography: “Every Town is a Sports Town: Business Leadership at ESPN from the Mailroom to the Boardroom.”

From 1998-2011, Bodenheimer oversaw an unprecedented period of growth, change and innovation in ESPN’s history.

“He is the guy who built ESPN from the great idea it was into the most significant, most influential multi-platform company in the world,” said his successor as president, John Skipper.

I recently had a chance to talk to Bodenheimer. Here’s my Q/A:

What do you remember about your first day at ESPN?

Bodenheimer: One of my recollections was I had to carry a small tree over to another building for one of the lawyers’ offices. The tree wasn’t particularly heavy but it was tall. I’m kind of walking through the legal department, the new kid the first day carrying a tree to a lawyer to decorate his office.  That was certainly a vivid memory of the first day.

In the book, you write you were struck by ESPN’s mentality of trying anything in those early days. How did that impact you?

I don’t think I ended up putting this in the book, but I talked about it a lot over the years.  When you’re president of ESPN, people want to know all about what the strategy is, what’s your strategy for going forward? Those are legitimate questions to ask the boss.  But I would say, ‘Here’s our strategy:  We’d try things, we’d try many things. Those that work we keep doing and try to make better all the time, and those things that don’t work, we stop doing.  That’s our strategy.’

I use that answer a lot. I know it’s an oversimplified answer to what’s the company strategy, but it’s kind of the culture of ESPN, and it was informed in those early days when we were just making it up as we go along. Let’s try the NFL draft, let’s try the early rounds of the NCAA college basketball tournament, etc. That’s really what got the company going.

How would you define the culture at ESPN?

I would say certainly optimism, like we can do it, passion, we love sports, risk‑taking, gee, if it doesn’t work, we’ll go on to something else, integrity, and I would say family.  It felt like a family out there, and I think those words, family, optimism, passion, integrity, hard work. I think that’s what defines the ESPN culture, and I believe it’s the company’s strategic advantage.

How would you describe the landscape when you took over as president? What did you see as the challenges at the time?

Well, surprisingly I had people telling me, ‘My gosh, you’re not going to be able to grow the company beyond where it is today. It’s already a success. It’s already big.  Good luck.’ And of course that didn’t turn out to be true, and it’s still not true today.  ESPN literally never stopped growing, 35 years later.

HD is a perfect example. I think it was ’03, there was no business model, and there were competing technologies. Everybody was kind of like saying, ‘Yeah, we know it’s a better picture, but what’s the model and what’s the technology?’ The ESPN company in following its mission knew that, ‘my God, the picture is that much better, we have to move in this direction.’ We launched first and established a wide lead in HD that was really beneficial to the company.

In the book, you describe a memorable meeting with Steve Jobs after ESPN launched its mobile phone.

Oh, I remember it vividly.  The first words out of his mouth after I introduced myself was “I hate your phone.”  I’m like, oh, my God.  We just launched the thing with much fanfare, we were trying to make it work, and my first meeting with Steve Jobs, these are the words out of his mouth.  It was certainly a reality check.  It turned out that, of course, he was right in terms of the business model we were on, that we were going to own the inventory ourselves, which was the wrong model.  But yeah, there you go. We shifted quickly and now have our mobile business is one of the fastest growing businesses at ESPN, and that’s only less than 10 years later.

During your tenure, ESPN greatly expanded its portfolio with expensive properties. What was your thinking there?

You can never go wrong acquiring world class programming. We went on quite a run there in the 2000s: Monday Night Football, the Masters, British Open, Wimbledon, BCS. We were very focused as the company’s strength grew to continue to acquire the very best product we could.

At the same time, stay focused on SportsCenter, the flagship of ESPN. That combination of sports news, journalism and events, those are the pillars.

What was your reaction when you learned about the Sports Emmys honoring you with the Lifetime Achievement Award?

I was very happy. The Emmy Award is the pinnacle award in our business, and I’m really proud to accept the award on behalf of the ESPN people and all the people that have worked there over the years.  I really think that I share this award with them. I think it’s a very nice recognition of what the company has accomplished over 35 years.  That’s how I view it.  That’s why I’m very happy about it.

Looking back, what stands out for you during your tenure?

If someone said, what were the highlights of your long tenure as president of the network, I know my answer to this question. You are going to laugh, but I’m saying it sincerely to you. The best part of the job for me was watching the ESPN people work together. I was at plenty of 50‑yard lines, plenty of courtside seats, plenty of everything in that job, and I loved that all, but the best part was working with the ESPN people and seeing them work together. That is how I feel.

What do you see for ESPN going forward now? Are we going to be watching, consuming sports completely differently in the 2020s than we do now?

Well, I’ll give you my favorite answer. I’ve given this answer for 15 years. I don’t know. But what I do know is that the ESPN people know their mission, and they’re going to collectively figure it out together because that’s what they do, and they’re passionate about sports. I don’t know if we’re going to be watching sports from the inside of a coffee cup or on clouds when we’re sitting on the beach. I don’t know the answer to that. But I do know that ESPN will be working very hard to be there and be there first because that’s what the culture of the company demands.