Pat Dooley takes a shot at you guys

78

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There were a lot of good people on that staff, but my personal fave was Tom Ford, who died way too young in 2003. Covered auto racing and other stuff. Mentored me. What a great guy.
 

rogdochar

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I had a lifetime familiarity with the folks if South Georgia (esp Folkston, Waycross - all my relatives mother's side) and with country-folk of North Florida since I hit Jax at age 6 & we traveled back-forth a lot 'cause Mom was a busybody with her past.

During the first or second week of opening my dental practice in Callahan, my assistant opened the waiting room door to admit this patient. She was striking, her face said c'mon let's have fun. And she was 77 years old. In pathology, we were taught to first-off observe a patient's gait. It can reveal some disorders. Her walk struck a cord in my memory, but it was far from diseased. Once we seated her, I asked about her life?family? She'd been a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, age 19, back in the roaring 20's on to 1978. Then the kicker = her husband owned the Chicago Tribune! He died, her sister lived in Folkston, so this sophisticated lady had retired to Folkson.?? Then she said: "But first I bought the golf course." There it was, she had the "in-command-of-happiness" stride of a golfer, at 77.
She golfed all her life and wanted no obstacles to how many guests she brought or getting the tee-time special treatment. She wasn't pushy, she was genteel & I'm sure she fit right in to "the Gentlemen's Game".
 

Swamp Donkey

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That would have been 2%s in the 70s. 50k right now Alachua county is upper 15% at least.
You're kidding, right? The average teacher in Alachua makes that. The average UF employee, twice that. The average county employee is right about 50 also.
 
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CGgater

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It's a pretty stress-free lifestyle. Wake up at 9, condense a few mundane thoughts into 10 sentences over coffee, quick proof, file, be on the course by 1 and the 19th hole by 5:15. Rinse and repeat.

$50,000 a year makes you part of the top 5 percenters in Hogtown.

Get paid to talk sports? Where do I sign up??? I got just a few years left until the CG will be ready to kick me to the curb for being an old fart.
 

78

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You're kidding, right? The average teacher in Alachua makes that. The average UF employee, twice that. The average county employee is right about 50 also.

You can't translate UF employees' compensation to Sun employees'. The Sun was always a notoriously low baller. They had to. The New York Times kept 'em on a string. When I went to work for them in September 1979 as a stringer, I got paid $12 a story, $10 to do the weekly fishing report (with Rob Oglesby looking over my shoulder).

After gas, beer and cigarettes, I think I was in the hole. I'd donate plasma at some place on University Ave. in order to make ends meet.
 

stephenPE

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$10 to do the weekly fishing report (with Rob Oglesby looking over my shoulder)
Did you know the old band director that wrote the fishing column. WTF was his name. I even have his book autographed. His house was across the canal in Suwannee from ours and we talked fish'n quite often. Nice old guy.
 

78

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Did you know the old band director that wrote the fishing column. WTF was his name. I even have his book autographed. His house was across the canal in Suwannee from ours and we talked fish'n quite often. Nice old guy.
Richard Bowles. Sweetheart of a man. I have no idea how he put up with me. I knew more about giving a C-section than fishing.
 

Gator2222

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The only thing worse than the lists that Pat Dooley passes off as sports columns is his radio show.

I got in the car this morning to go get ink and turned on the radio. On the way to Office Depot I had the privilege of listening to Dooley explain that he learned to play Nothing Compares on the guitar. Then I went into the store. On the way back Dooley talked about his daughter making him listen to some song that samples Hotel California.

Not one word about sports or anything even closely related to sports. It's just two hours of Dooley talking about Dooley and complaining about random minor inconveniences.

It's hard to imagine him actually thinking people want to listen to him talk about himself for 2 hours.
 

Double Gator Dad

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Tom had me ride with him in his BMW 535i for the '87 FSU game. Another guy was to go and didn't make it in time to the downtown Tribune building, so we left without him. McEwen demanded punctuality. We hightailed it up to G'ville and parked on the lawn just beyond the north end zone. As we made our way toward the stadium, we stopped what seemed like a dozen times to greet well wishers, some of them obvious notorious types. John Reaves was one. Sandy D'Alemberte was another. Everyone knew McEwen and everyone respected him. He was the sports editor for a major Florida metropolitan newspaper, but on this day he seemed more like Gator royalty. I think he enjoyed being the latter more.

We lost the game, lost it badly. I did a sidebar on Emmitt Smith, filed my story and we headed home. We stopped for gas at the Archer interchange and McEwen picked up a six pack and handed me the keys. I looked at him as if to say, you want me to drive your Beemer? Yep. The moment I got on I-75, he popped open a beer and handed me one. Now it made sense why he wanted me to drive. What the hell, I thought.

We talked and talked and talked the whole way home, about a lot of stuff, and killed the six pack. I remember really needing to stop for a pee break around Hernando County. I held it until we got to Tampa and then killed a swatch of shrubs lining the Tribune building.

That was a memorable day.


Wow! What a flashback

As I read this excellent description of the late, great, Tom McEwen it reminded me of the days when sportswriters were journalists not cheerleaders. A time when journalists built such credible reputations that they could tell you what was really going on and 1.) You knew what you were reading was accurate and 2.) The journalists were not afraid to tell you because UF was not in a position to screw with a purveyor of truth.
This is precisely what I described in this thread as what Dooley is NOT.
If you are really good at what you do and you only speak in the factual sense, you can transcend the jealous and/or vindictive responses from the sports entity. The key word being IF.

I will go back to my black and white tv and make a few calls on my princess phone now.
 

Gator by the Sea

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The only thing worse than the lists that Pat Dooley passes off as sports columns is his radio show.

I got in the car this morning to go get ink and turned on the radio. On the way to Office Depot I had the privilege of listening to Dooley explain that he learned to play Nothing Compares on the guitar. Then I went into the store. On the way back Dooley talked about his daughter making him listen to some song that samples Hotel California.

Not one word about sports or anything even closely related to sports. It's just two hours of Dooley talking about Dooley and complaining about random minor inconveniences.

It's hard to imagine him actually thinking people want to listen to him talk about himself for 2 hours.


But that's the problem...he's such a pompous jackass that he really does believe people care about his guitar, his iPod, or what he eats. In his pathetic mind, he believes he's some kind of Gainesville celebrity.
 

78

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The Sun was pretty loosey goosey in terms of sports content back in the day. Froscher was executive sports editor, which meant he was technically in charge of the day to day and assigning stories. In practice, Freddie Roush, who laid out the section, was really the guy in charge day to day. I'm not totally sure how much veto power Hairston, as editor, had over Roush, but my guess is not enough if the story was compelling, although I could be wrong. Rob Oglesby, the Sun's managing editor back then, had a lot of respect for Freddie's workaholic ways and how he kept the department together. Freddie wasn't afraid to pull punches. I liked that about him.

Where I'm going with this is, when it came to the University of Florida, the Sun had the obvious tactical advantage of being there. Where it was disadvantaged was resources. It didn't have the manpower of, say, the St. Pete Times, which was almost singularly responsible for breaking open the Pell cheating scandal in 1983. The Times didn't just assign sports people to the story; it put news types on it, too. The Times literally overwhelmed UF with its coverage, and pissed off a lot of people in the process. I was working for them back then in their Clearwater bureau and feeling a bit conflicted. It felt almost like overkill. In hindsight, I know the Times did the right thing.

The Sun? It just sort of sat back and let the Times do all the work, much to its detriment. The Sun could have made a name for itself. It chose a backseat.

There you have to wonder how much Hairston owning and operating his Gator tabloid had to do with the Sun's decision to be passive on the Pell scandal. Maybe not much, but you still have to wonder. Ultimately, that conflict of interest, which was glaring, got Hairston fired, and Dooley had a lot to do with it.

So there you go, Pat Dooley's lasting legacy. The guy who got Jack Hairston fired.
 

CGgater

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The Sun was pretty loosey goosey in terms of sports content back in the day. Froscher was executive sports editor, which meant he was technically in charge of the day to day and assigning stories. In practice, Freddie Roush, who laid out the section, was really the guy in charge day to day. I'm not totally sure how much veto power Hairston, as editor, had over Roush, but my guess is not enough if the story was compelling, although I could be wrong. Rob Oglesby, the Sun's managing editor back then, had a lot of respect for Freddie's workaholic ways and how he kept the department together. Freddie wasn't afraid to pull punches. I liked that about him.

Where I'm going with this is, when it came to the University of Florida, the Sun had the obvious tactical advantage of being there. Where it was disadvantaged was resources. It didn't have the manpower of, say, the St. Pete Times, which was almost singularly responsible for breaking open the Pell cheating scandal in 1983. The Times didn't just assign sports people to the story; it put news types on it, too. The Times literally overwhelmed UF with its coverage, and pissed off a lot of people in the process. I was working for them back then in their Clearwater bureau and feeling a bit conflicted. It felt almost like overkill. In hindsight, I know the Times did the right thing.

The Sun? It just sort of sat back and let the Times do all the work, much to its detriment. The Sun could have made a name for itself. It chose a backseat.

There you have to wonder how much Hairston owning and operating his Gator tabloid had to do with the Sun's decision to be passive on the Pell scandal. Maybe not much, but you still have to wonder. Ultimately, that conflict of interest, which was glaring, got Hairston fired, and Dooley had a lot to do with it.

So there you go, Pat Dooley's lasting legacy. The guy who got Jack Hairston fired.

Based on info in the previous posts and the fact that JH was the senior sports guy, I'd say Jack got Jack fired.
 

78

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Based on info in the previous posts and the fact that JH was the senior sports guy, I'd say Jack got Jack fired.

Newspaper titles can be deceiving. Sports editor to the sports department is not the same as editor to the entire paper. In many, many instances, it's simply a figurehead title. If you want to assume the blame game, blame Ed Johnson or Rob Oglesby for allowing Hairston to continue to write columns for the Sun while pimping his own sports rag on the side. Dooley saw it for what it was, called it out and it contributed to Hairston's ouster.

Pat then became sports editor. :lol:
 

stephenPE

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It didn't have the manpower of, say, the St. Pete Times, which was almost singularly responsible for breaking open the Pell cheating scandal in 1983. The Times didn't just assign sports people to the story; it put news types on it, too. The Times literally overwhelmed UF with its coverage, and pissed off a lot of people in the process. I was working for them back then in their Clearwater bureau and feeling a bit conflicted. It felt almost like overkill. In hindsight, I know the Times did the right thing.

The Sun? It just sort of sat back and let the Times do all the work, much to its detriment. The Sun could have made a name for itself. It chose a backseat.

There you have to wonder how much Hairston owning and operating his Gator tabloid had to do with the Sun's decision to be passive on the Pell scandal. Maybe not much, but you still have to wonder. Ultimately, that conflict of interest, which was glaring, got Hairston fired, and Dooley had a lot to do with it.
I thought the Journal from Broward had the first story on it and something to do with a kicker that was offered "inducements" to come to UF. That said I contend that and always will that Fla did nothing but what was standard procedure in Tuscaloosa. Knoxville, Athens, Baton Rouge and Auburn. That those were basically closed societies and kept it quiet. I know that Pell was followed from Clemson for his work there but he was a Bear disciple and knew what it took to win. The penalties Fla got pizzz me to this day as harsh as they were and those mofos from the others schools just kept rolling along doing the same gdam stuff...............but I guess in the end SOS made up for all that crap.
 

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