Quotes About Sportswriters

Marciano was an idol in a simpler era, when professional athletes were heroes and sportswriters were complicit in building legends rather than exposing them. To the public, all that really mattered was that Rocky had 49 wins in 49 fights and retired in 1956 as the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world.

Led by a new generation of edgy sportswriters like Lipsyte, we found new purpose in the great issues of the day - race, equal opportunity, drugs, and labor disputes. We became personality journalists, medical writers, and business reporters.

The Lord taught me to love everybody, but the last ones I learned to love were the sportswriters.

My real heroes have always been sportswriters.

The self-image of many contemporary sportswriters seems to depend on maintaining that were it not for sports, athletes would be pumping gas, if they were not sticking up the gas station.

Grantland Rice, the dean of those sportswriters. "When a sportswriter stops making heroes out of athletes," Rice once said, "it's time to get out of the business.