Twenty-five years ago, a young sportswriter had much to learn

Over the years, many people have asked me how I got into the newspaper business. The simple, honest answer is, “I’m not exactly sure.”

I suspect it had a lot to do with my college years being marked by a complete lack of avarice or ambition. After a couple of years of forging my adviser’s signature so that I could take course loads that added up to pretty much nothing, I had to declare a major. I decided to major in Whatever, although I did minor in French. Today, I remember a lot more Whatever than French.

When you decide to major in Whatever, however, you just might find yourself having to get a full-time job. Because I was already a local-yokel sportswriter for my hometown newspaper covering my high school alma mater’s sports teams and some tangential events like the cow-chip fundraiser, I was well-prepared for a career as a full-time sportswriter.

That was in 1991 — yep, 25 years ago. I never thought I’d live long enough to remember anything that happened 25 years ago. I don’t mean to sound like an old codger, but 25 years is a long time. A quarter-century ago, gasoline cost less than a buck, a CD was considered high-tech and we thought Newt Gingrich was the name of an acid rock band.

My first full-time newspaper gig took me to Valdosta, Ga., where the average temperature is 112 degrees with 130 percent humidity. Valdostans vacation in Columbus for the cooler temperatures. It was also the center of the high school football universe with local teams Valdosta High and Lowndes High.

The Valdosta High mystique has faded into history, although they still are the all-time winningest high school football team in the nation. Recently, Lowndes has had the upper hand. But we covered both schools the way newspapers today cover UGA and Auburn football — all the time. You don’t know hot until you have to wear a tie and walk the sideline every minute of every practice.

But my real learning came inside the newspaper office. The paper back then was owned by a company not known for its high pay and benefits, and we had quite the cast of characters. The closer it got to deadline, the more cuss words I learned — words so bad the only other place you could hear such filth is in the seventh-grade boys bathroom.

I learned how to make dinners from vending machines. Coincidentally, I learned how to buy bigger pants and how to check my own blood pressure. I learned how to write stories in 10 minutes. I learned how to find high school athletic fields in the boonies by looking for the lights (no GPS back then). I learned that every Atlanta Braves game was on AM radio — after years of following bad teams on TV, when they finally got good I had to listen on radio.

I learned that you can invest hours of print coverage into an event, but folks are more excited when they see themselves on TV for 2 seconds — something made even more aggravating when the TV folks would interrupt us on deadline by calling and asking for the final score of the game we just sat all the way through. I also learned that those same TV folks could park ANYWHERE, but print guys get parking tickets.

I learned how to manage my meager finances and get excited when I could buy new socks and underwear. I learned to be thankful after deadline that I could go home and meet Patty Duke and Dobie Gillis over at Nick@Nite. And I learned that sports are more fun to a fan than a sportswriter — and that the referees and umpires don’t cheat nearly as much when you look at a game objectively.

Of course, now that I’m a good many years removed from my sportswriting days and am a mere fan, they’ve started being biased against my teams once again.

This story was originally published July 23, 2016 at 9:52 PM with the headline "Twenty-five years ago, a young sportswriter had much to learn."