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.

They should have a rule: in order to be a sportswriter, you have to have played that sport, at some level; high school, college, junior college, somewhere. Or, you should have had to have been around the game for a long time.

A sportswriter's life means never sitting with your wife or family at the games. Still working after everyone has gone to the party... Digging beneath a coach's lies, not to forget those of athletic directors and general managers and owners of pro teams. Keeping a confidence. Risking it.

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

When I was in Cleveland I asked a sportswriter if I could borrow $50,000 to buy a motorcycle. He wrote it like I was serious.

I have a wonderful husband, sportswriter Peter Talbert.

My first name, with the rare two-r spelling, came from a sportswriter named Garry Schumacher. My parents didn't know him personally, but my mother liked the spelling.

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.

I tell you what. 85 percent of the sportswriters think I'm stupid or a clown or something. They think I'm crazy.

Sportswriters have changed more than sportswriting.

At times during high school and college I wished to be a sportswriter.

I have learned, in my life and work as a sportswriter, that big-time Sports and big-time Politics are not so far apart in America. They are both a means to the same end, which is victory... And why not? Victory is good for you, and don't let anybody tell you different.

My real heroes have always been sportswriters.

I had a soft-spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth.

I'm not a sportswriter.

I covered hockey for a few years in the late '90s and early 2000s for the 'Colorado Springs Gazette,' and I covered the Avalanche for some of the glory years. I've done hockey off and on as a sportswriter but never played it.

I told another ESPN friend here, I love all sports. I can't think of any I don't love. I've even come to appreciate cricket. Maybe I could play a sportswriter. I don't know. Anything in the sports realm is appealing.

I wanted to be a sportswriter because I loved sports and I could not hit the curve ball, the jump shot, or the opposing ball carrier.

Sportswriters. They were all my friends. They were racetrack guys and so was I.

I am a professional sportswriter, among other things, and I take the games seriously. It is only one of my many powerful addictions, and I don't mind admitting any of them.