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The final full-length interview with Paul Newman before his death didn't come by chance. Following up on a rare interview I landed with Newman as a writer at the Long Beach Press-Telegram, I worked with his representatives for weeks to get a one-on-one --- all while covering the 2006 Indy 500. I got the green light two days before Newman and the open-wheel team he co-owned was scheduled to run in Monterrey, Mexico. I spent parts of two days with Newman and his racing team. I turned the story around that weekend for Monday's paper.
Credit: USA TODAY
The mission of the NFL Alumni Association is to makes sure the voices of retired players are heard. FOXSports.com Senior NFL Writer Alex Marvez and I received tips that not only wasn't that the case, but the organization was mismanaged. We dug through documents, spreadsheets, bankruptcy court records, tax forms and interviewed dozens of people to gauge the stewardship of the NFLAA under former New York Giants great George Martin. What we found was that Martin did little with the more than $4 million in NFL loans to help retired players and he siphoned some of that money along with Super Bowl tickets to organizations or businesses run by family members. Moreover, the hiring committee had no idea he had declared bankruptcy on multiple occasions. After refusing to talk by phone or in person, I confronted him before the Super Bowl in Indianapolis in February. Three months later --- with the NFLAA effectively broke -- Martin eventually resigned.
Mixed martial arts is portrayed as brutal sport, but the fact remained that only one person had died in the U.S. in a sanctioned bout. That changed in June when Michael Kirkham, whose 6-foot-9 frame far outdistanced his experience in the cage, was killed two days after a fight. I traveled to Kirkham’s former stomping grounds of Fayetteville, N.C., where I got a feel for what kind of person he was via interviews with his friends and discovered his troubled past through court documents. The story also exposed to the lax regulations that govern MMA, especially at the lower levels.
After spending six months filing open-records requests in an attempt to get at the salaries of football coaches at dozens of schools, I put a face on the project thanks to Mike Rutenberg. The New Mexico State secondary coach tied for the lowest salary of any assistant in the nation. I spent the better part of the week with Rutenberg in Las Cruces to understand what makes him work so hard for so little. It turned out to be the most approachable story of the entire three-day-long package and went beyond what we already knew about coaches salaries: several coaches make too much and scores on campuses around the nation aren't happy with that. This was my last cover story at USA TODAY.
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Not all my stories took tremendous digging. Sometimes you just are in the right place. As I was walking out of the Capitals training facility after some interviews, I saw a couple guys wearing green jackets with Polk County Sheriff's patches attached. I remembered back to a story I had done for USA Today the previous June where a steroid dealer from that county in Florida alleged that he sold steroids to Capitals and Nationals players. I began to ask some questions of the deputies and soon realized that I had a story, which I wrote from the rink's cafeteria to keep it an exclusive for a few more minutes.
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