The Sports Fan Project

I remember where I was 35 years ago. Shoot, I remember where I was for the previous nine days!

On December 12, 1987, I was sitting the press box in Bulldog Stadium in Fresno, CA, next to San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Art Spander, for the 1987 California Bowl pitting the Mid-American Conference champs, Eastern Michigan University, against the Pacific Coast Athletic Association champion, San Jose State University.

It was heady times for this 20-year-old student reporter at the Eastern Echo who was attempting to cover both the EMU men’s basketball and football teams each with significant matchups a week apart.

The basketball team spent December 4 and 5 in Columbia, MO, playing in the Show-Me Classic on the campus of the University of Missouri. Eastern defeated Alcorn State in the opener, 75-61, and then took 8th-ranked Missouri to double-overtime before falling 77-75 in the championship game. It was a coming out party, of sorts, for the basketball team which would eventually win the 1987-88 MAC Championship and qualify for the NCAA Tournament for the first time as a Division I team.

As this was during an era before laptop computers and ease of transmission of stories via email, this writer spent the early Sunday morning bus trip from Columbia to the St. Louis airport and the ensuing flight to Detroit scribbling out stories in a spiral notebook. Once back on campus in the Echo offices I began typing stories in our computer system to meet the deadline for Monday’s edition.

When that was over, it was a quick repack of my suitcase and a meet up in front of Bowen Field House for the bus trip with the cheer team, marching band, and other district officials back to the Detroit airport for an early evening flight to Fresno by way of Los Angeles. We arrived at the Fresno airport sometime around 9 p.m. local time if memory serves.

Bowl week was a bit of a blur, if I’m being honest.

There were practices to cover, media sessions, outings to the local children’s hospital, and joint team activities at a recreational/amusement park with an arcade, mini-golf, and go-cart racing.

When I wasn’t busy attending these events, interviewing players, coaches, and other university personnel, I was busy writing stories out in that spiral notebook and then, making phone calls back to the Echo at all hours of the day to dictate said stories to whomever was able to take my call. Sometimes it was Wayne Wilson in the sports department but other times it was Barrie Barber or Tom Varcie in the news department or Catherine Hill in features or Catherine Chytry, the editor-in-chief.

Beyond vividly remembering my seat next to Spander in the press box (and I remember this only because I always read his work in The Sporting News so it was beyond cool to be in the same spot as him), the two moments that stand out these 35 years later are the following:

• It didn’t take me long to realize I didn’t have any money to speak of with me. During one of my calls back to the Echo I asked to speak to the director of student media, Rita Abent, who instructed me to go see Athletic Director Gene Smith – yes, the same Gene Smith who is currently The Ohio State University’s Senior Vice-President and Athletic Director. So, that day at the go-cart races, I sidled up to Smith and mentioned Rita told me I should see him about some per diem money. He looked me over, kind of shook his head, grinned, and pulled a roll of bills out of his pants pocket. When I say he easily had a couple thousand dollars in that pocket, I am not exaggerating. He peeled off three $100 bills and handed them to me and asked if I thought that would be sufficient. What was I gonna say?
• The other moment I recall was one afternoon following practice and press availability I found myself in a local watering hole chatting up another media person I knew, Brad Emons from the Observer-Eccentric papers, who in turn introduced me to Chris McCosky who (I think) also worked at O&E at the time. Chris, it turns out, was an Echo alum. Also in the bar was former EMU All-American baseball player Bob Welch. It was my first and only time meeting Welch, but he seemed a likable fella. Also in the bar was EMU assistant football coach Mike Babcock who took issue with something I’d written about a coaching decision earlier in the season and was, shall we say, somewhat confrontational. Chris and Brad stepped in to not only defend my honor but also the journalism profession and more or less told Babcock to bugger off.

By the time gameday arrived I was fairly well exhausted.

Eastern’s come-from-behind 30-27 victory found me trading my exhaustion for exhiliration by the time the game was over. It also found me furiously scribbling stories, sidebars, and a column in that spiral notebook on the return flight to Detroit because there was, of course, a deadline looming Sunday when I returned to the Echo office.