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I'm not a sportswriter.

A sportswriter's life means never sitting with your wife or family at the games. Still working after everyone has gone to the party... Digging beneath a coach's lies, not to forget those of athletic directors and general managers and owners of pro teams. Keeping a confidence. Risking it.

I think of sports writers as mediating between two worlds. Athletes probably think of sports writers as not macho enough. And people in high culture probably think of sports writers as jocks or something. They are in an interestingly complex position in which they have to mediate the world of body and the world of words.

My real heroes have always been sportswriters.

They should have a rule: in order to be a sportswriter, you have to have played that sport, at some level; high school, college, junior college, somewhere. Or, you should have had to have been around the game for a long time.

I began learning the sportswriting business very early in life.

News writing and sports writing have become synonymous. And it started with, you know, free agency, and now it's in the concussion debate.

At times during high school and college I wished to be a sportswriter.

Every time you write anything, at least half your readers are going to disagree with you. A big part of sports writing is how you respond to that tension.

I was sports editor for my high school newspaper, but I think I shied away from journalism.