Sun sets on this reporter

Eight years ago I wrote my first sports column here. It was about Mike Krzyzewski's lack of comment after three of his players left early for the NBA and another transferred.

The headline was, "The K is silent at Duke."

Now, many columns later, it's my turn to go quiet. This is my last column.

Starting next week, I will move to the Newsroom and have new responsibilities as editor of the Sunday newspaper. It's part of many moves at The News & Observer as staffers change roles to improve the newspaper's content and the way we cover the region in print and on the Internet.

My move is a return to what I did before becoming a rookie sportswriter at 43. Then I was an editor who wanted to write. Now I'm writer who is needed to edit.

I welcome the change. There aren't many jobs better than this one, but I didn't see it as a lifetime appointment. One of the appeals of newspaper work is its variety.

Though I close with this necessary mention of my new role, "I" is a word I tried to avoid. It was an effort to keep the perspective outward. I didn't want this space to be my microphone. I wanted it to be a window.

Sports media have enough experts. I didn't pretend to be another (Sorry, Buffalo Sabres fans). Sportswriting is no different than other forms of journalism. What matters isn't what you know, but how good you are at finding things out.

When I started in sportswriting, I looked for guidance from the best, the writings of the late Red Smith. He wrote, "The guy I admire most in the world is a good reporter. I respect a good reporter, and I'd like to be called that. I'd like to be considered good and honest and reasonably accurate."

I tried to follow his lead. Whatever progress I made as a reporter will make me a better editor. There is no better cure for the insularity that can overtake editors than a long dose of doing the reporting and writing yourself.

One thing I wanted my reporting to do was shed light beyond the bright lights. ACC football and men's basketball get and deserve great attention, but readers also should meet those who are simply and nobly athletes.

I covered the famous such as Marion Jones, Shane Battier, Philip Rivers and Rod Brind'Amour, but I also was impressed by the competitive drive of those not in the headlines. They were people as varied as UNC's Laura Gerraughty, an Olympic shot-putter; Raleigh's Mike Coltrain, a professional pool player; and Wake Forest's Bob Boal, a masters track athlete into his late 80s who died at 93.

To look more broadly at sports doesn't mean paying less attention to the most popular ones. It means paying more. It means looking harder at the trends and forces beyond the recruiting, the players and the scores.

What are ESPN and the proliferation of other cable sports channels doing to how we see sports and athletes? How is Nike changing the way colleges fund sports and pay coaches? How much are drugs warping performance?

William C. Friday and the Knight Commission may sound like broken records when they lament the corrosive effect of commercialism on college sports, but they're right. One of the worst trends is the rise of celebrity coaches who are paid millions of dollars to direct the unpaid labor of college athletes. It's an inequity that could hurt college basketball and football if some players -- legally or otherwise -- seek their share.

Those worries aside, sportswriting has been a good run and a long one. It took me to several men's and women's Final Fours, two of golf's U.S. Opens, two Stanley Cup finals, two Olympics and one trip onto the field of Ohio State's "Horseshoe" where I was flooded by the loudest sound I heard in sports, the roar of 100,000 Buckeyes trying to stop N.C. State in triple overtime.

This was a job in which the journey was as good as the arrival. It took me from Sydney to Athens, from Montreal to Los Angeles, from Miami to Edmonton and left me for a week right in the middle of everything, Lawrence, Kan., waiting for Ol' Roy to make up his mind.

Sportswriting can be fun, but it's not all fun and games. The thing I learned most clearly was how hard sportswriters work, usually on deadline, often at night and almost every weekend.

The sportswriters, the sports editors and sports copy desk at The N&O put out a first-class section. One of the surprises of many who move here is that they left a larger newspaper behind and found a better sports section here.

I'm proud to have been a part of it, glad that I'll still read it and grateful to all who do.