Gary Smith

Gotta make a first post sometime. Smith's Radio article was in the mid-90s, 95 or 96, I think, so it's not realistic to blame him for not putting a link considering where Internet use was back then.

And if I remember correctly, Deford got the idea for one of his most famous articles - The Toughest Coach Who Ever Lived - after reading a newspaper story about the old coach (whose name escapes me now) on a plane.

 

It was an article in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger by Rick Cleveland about Bull Sullivan, the coach of East Mississippi Community College.

And this is it:
http://www.shwiggie.com/articles/bullsullivan/index.html

 

Writers own their words, not their ideas. Christ, if every story could only be written once, our newspapers and magazines would be pretty fucking thin.

 

Sirs, Madames,

By these standards, Truman Capote ripped off In Cold Blood. Wasn't like he found this murder case first or anything.

YHS, etc

 

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought I remember his story on Pat Tillman being pretty good

 

Larry Craig is a dip-shit whether he's gay or not.

 

If I remember, the editor of SI used to do a small preview of the rest of the magazine near the front. The week DeFord's story on Sullivan ran, the editor told the story about how DeFord found out about it reading the Jackson paper. So at least props were given.

DeFord's story on Sullivan is still my favorite piece of sports journalism of all time. And I covered a high school coach once who played on a team in the Mississippi JUCO conference with Sullivan's team. Once, Scoba JC (Sullivan's team) played at home against this coach's team (I think it was Pearl River), and Scoba lost a close one. Before the Pearl River bus left, Sullivan knocked at the door and asked to come on. He went to the back of the bus and immediately grabbed two of his players -- who had screwed up on some turnover or penalty near the end of the game, and was trying to escape by getting on the other team's bus.

 

A great, great story.

 

one of my favorite snippets: "At Perkinston J.C., they used to fire a cannon right behind the visitors' bench to stir up the crowd. Bull Cyclone, who could still get nervous when he heard loud noises-"You didn't sneak up on Dad," Bobbie says-protested to the president of Perkinston, but the reply came back that the cannon was "tradition." Bull Cyclone then wrote that "my managers and I will bring double-barreled shotguns to Perkinston, and if there is one tradition I learned in the military it was to retaliate." The president agreed to silence the guns of Perkinston. And so the tales of rough, tough Bull Cyclone spread, and Stumpy Harbour simmered."

 

I just checked my Sports Illustrated library to be certain ...

If you care to see a photo of Gary Smith, he and his son, Noah, appeared in a photograph in SI on Sept. 24, 2001, the tremendous 9/11 issue that features an illustration of an American flag draped over a stadium seat on the cover ("The Week That Sports Stood Still").

Six years ago, at least, Smith appeared tall and slender, sort of like a marathon runner with a little more meat on his bones, with short brown hair and a faint gray beard. Not grandfatherly, not yet, at least, but fatherly.

Very good story, too, about taking his son to a high school football the first week after the attacks.

 

Agreed. I don't necessarily find anything excessively wrong that Smith did.

 

Gary Smith's latest story in SI on Shannon is an excellent piece.