Pat Dooley takes a shot at you guys

[Swamp Donkey]

What about Larry Vettel?

Im not a Yankees fan so I never listened.

 

[Swamp Donkey]

Hawaiian guy with all the TATS!!

6-4 240 lb Hawaiian guy w tatts who was riding around w Reggie Nelson....

At least I thinknthat was the description.

 

[stephenPE]

Well, it will be interesting to see what Pat says about AH after this. He should interview Urban and some of his team mates. Hearing about his 4 year old daughter maybe some of AH's team mates can reach out to her to surrogate or remind her of good things he did. Interview Timmy even. Sounds like a made for TV movie.

 

[TN G8tr]

6-4 240 lb Hawaiian guy w tatts who was riding around w Reggie Nelson....

At least I thinknthat was the description.

Plus I believe that the Pouncey's were interviewed as well.

 

[Double Gator Dad]

I find everyone's comments about Dooley comforting. I say that because it lets me know that I am not alone in my perception of him and the sports section for that matter.

The term lazy was stated which is exactly correct. Dooley reminds me of a high school teacher that has taught the same class for decades and can and does sleep walk through each day with no thought or creativity included.

The fact that the paper NEVER, and I mean never, breaks a story about anything UF. This is also a fact. Periodically Dooley will make some arrogant statement about what he knows to be the real truth but then NEVER, and I mean never, shares this incredible insight as if it is confidential and will compromise his sources. Sources for what? The insight he never shares?

When was the last time Dooley publicly stated anything negative about a coach at UF? At the height of the Muschamp debacle, he was still playing the middle of the road versus being a true writer with an opinion.

Unfortunately, the Gainesville Sun has followed the course of many newspapers and have simply become cheerleaders for the causes they believe in and benefit them directly. Dooley goes out of his way everyday to make sure that he doesn't do anything to jeopardize his position and relationship with the athletic program. I believe this job already exists, it is called the SID. We don't need another one, we need journalism.

 

[78]

When Dooley was a cub reporter at the Sun, he protégéd under Jack Hairston, who was the Sports Editor when I was in school at UF. Hairston was far and away the worst sports editor I've witnessed in my half-century walking this earth. Hairston was lazy, formulaic and trite, brutally mundane and redundant, and had, for years, developed a sports page that was almost unreadable. He knew he was the only game in town. There was no internet then, and the Gatorbait tabloid was still in its infancy, publishing only sporadically. So, Hairston had the easiest job in the industry. You HAD to read his crappy sports section, which was basically pablum fed to his second-rate reporters by the UF SID. The atmosphere of not having a bonafide Fourth Estate in Gainesville had an enabling affect. Charlie Pell and a group of awful boosters were able to run roughshod over rules and ethics without fear of any local investigation, and the resulting sanctions devastated our football program for almost a decade.

Hairston was comfy in his decades-held job and viewed his fiefdom as a small town community newspaper with cozy relationships that made his job easy instead of as an important part of a growing city and college sports community facing serious modern issues. Meanwhile, the understaffed and inexperienced writers at the Alligator were doing all the heavy lifting. The vast number of major stories that broke during those times came from the Alligator or from papers around the state, all while the Sun just kept printing press releases and raking in the print ad revenue. It was from this environment that Pat Dooley got his mentoring. Dooley's expectations were rooted in a job and career meant for the lazy. He would be a fat and happy eater of SID "news," he reckoned, and that suited him just fine.

Dooley did become fat, but it's clear the road his career took him down has made him far from happy. His bitterness toward his readers and former readers is present in nearly every passage he types. The declining readership and 1950s journalistic style have made him a laughing-stock and an easy target for internet message boards like ours. Pat Dooley is nothing more than a punch line at this point; a sad visage in an outdated Hawaiian shirt with a 1980s haircut, trying to prop up a dying sports page in a dying industry in a town and era that have completely passed him by.

Dude, were you there? I think you must have been. That's an amazingly accurate account of the old Sun days with Jack and Norm Froscher and Freddie Roush on the slot.

Jack would stroll in at 5 in the afternoon with his copy, leaving it to one of us on the rim to input it into the system. (I know, how inefficient can it get, but, hey, we're talking 1980.) He had no interest in hanging out, so he'd be gone within the half hour.

Roush ran the paper day to day along with Bobby Tyler, who was the UF beat writer and a guy I loved. Froscher was there to cover auto racing and Jack, well, he was there to keep us all amused with those scintillating two-sentence leads listing the names, heights and weights of the starting offensive line.

As you said, he had connections, lots of them, and it was at a time where that was more important than the prose you put in print.

I don't want to say more because he's gone and it seems unfair to criticize a man who's no longer around. But do allow me to point out he pretty much sucked.

 

[Swamp Donkey]

When was the last time Dooley publicly stated anything negative about a coach at UF? At the height of the Muschamp debacle, he was still playing the middle of the road versus being a true writer with an opinion.

I disagree. Until Mushchimp was fired Fat Tooley was still mocking anyone who supported firing Chimp and didnt believe all the losses were just terrible luck.

It wasn't until AFTER Chimp was fired that he pretended to be upset that Chimp wasn't fired earlier.

 

[PastyStoole]

That's an amazingly accurate account of the old Sun days with Jack and Norm Froscher and Freddie Roush on the slot.

Jack would stroll in at 5 in the afternoon with his copy, leaving it to one of us on the rim to input it into the system. (I know, how inefficient can it get, but, hey, we're talking 1980.) He had no interest in hanging out, so he'd be gone within the half hour.

Must have been a delight to have to edit his super crappy writing. lol. I don't envy you, even for having the job of reading it more than once. It was bad enough in print. Did he coin the phrase "The though here is that..."? He seemed to use it daily.

I've heard plenty over the years about the Sun. I'm pretty amazed when I go back to Gainesville and see it, it's pretty much the same paper I remember from the 1980s. It's like a time warp.

 

[78]

Must have been a delight to have to edit his super crappy writing. lol. I don't envy you, even for having the job of reading it more than once. It was bad enough in print. Did he coin the phrase "The though here is that..."? He seemed to use it daily.

I've heard plenty over the years about the Sun. I'm pretty amazed when I go back to Gainesville and see it, it's pretty much the same paper I remember from the 1980s. It's like a time warp.

No it wasn't. His copy was dry and lifeless, like reading a football roster but worse. The material wasn't organized in neat little columns like an actual roster.

That didn't bother Jack. He and McEwen, for whom I later worked, operated from a similar position of power. They were in with the movers and shakers and it was the message that mattered, not the delivery. To be fair to Jack, too, he was kind to me, even if we only spoke every so often.

 

[Swamp Donkey]

You're a good man, 78.

You can talk smack about me. I'm not dead..... yet.

 

[oxking]

He better make it count. I shoot back.

Great pic of Yosemite Sam. "Where is that rascally varmit?"

 

[stephenPE]

No it wasn't. His copy was dry and lifeless, like reading a football roster but worse. The material wasn't organized in neat little columns like an actual roster.

That didn't bother Jack. He and McEwen, for whom I later worked, operated from a similar position of power. They were in with the movers and shakers and it was the message that mattered, not the delivery. To be fair to Jack, too, he was kind to me, even if we only spoke every so often.

You worked for McEwen. Can I buy you a beer or dinner and listen to some stories. Even the stories about the Sun and Jack.
btw fellas, Pat wrote a good article about Hernandez today.

 

[78]

You worked for McEwen. Can I buy you a beer or dinner and listen to some stories. Even the stories about the Sun and Jack.
btw fellas, Pat wrote a good article about Hernandez today.

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.

 

[stephenPE]

I got his book on the gators many years ago and it was my Gator Bible. Years later I thought "I need him to autograph it for me". Never got it done. His opening lines about breakfast and grapefruit and guava jelly were gold. I grew up with those things, too. I read his column as a boy religiously. The Tribune back then, to me, was a great newspaper.

 

[stephenPE]

 

[78]

I can't say I knew McEwen well, but I knew two things about him well. He was very proud of his Wauchula roots and for being a graduate of the University of Florida. He made no effort to conceal either of these in his columns. He loved to talk about his alma mater and his bootstraps rise from a rural east bumf*ck Florida upbringing.

What really intrigued me about McEwen was the connections. Hairston was in tight with SEC types. McEwen's influence went much further. He hung with high money rollers, power brokers, people like Art Pepin and George Steinbrenner, the Malio's crowd. I remember him taking the entire staff over to Pepin's home one day. We were instructed what to wear in advance.

I don't think Tom ever had political aspirations, but I have no doubt that had he run for mayor of Tampa, he'd have been elected in a landslide.

 

[Double Gator Dad]

I can't say I knew McEwen well, but I knew two things about him well. He was very proud of his Wauchula roots and for being a graduate of the University of Florida. He made no effort to conceal either of these in his columns. He loved to talk about his alma mater and his bootstraps rise from a rural east bumf*ck Florida upbringing.

What really intrigued me about McEwen was the connections. Hairston was in tight with SEC types. McEwen's influence went much further. He hung with high money rollers, power brokers, people like Art Pepin and George Steinbrenner, the Malio's crowd. I remember him taking the entire staff over to Pepin's home one day. We were instructed what to wear in advance.

I don't think Tom ever had political aspirations, but I have no doubt that had he run for mayor of Tampa, he'd have been elected in a landslide.

True, but then Tampa would not have enjoyed the fallout from the corrupt Dick Greco regime that seemed to come back whenever it appeared safe to come out again.

 

[Double Gator Dad]

I disagree. Until Mushchimp was fired Fat Tooley was still mocking anyone who supported firing Chimp and didnt believe all the losses were just terrible luck.

It wasn't until AFTER Chimp was fired that he pretended to be upset that Chimp wasn't fired earlier.

I am not sure we disagree. I was saying the same thing. A real journalist would have been calling for Chimp's head for at least a year.
I softened it by saying middle of the road but your statement is more accurate.
The point being that Dooley would not do or say anything controversial (well about UF anyway but yet he has no problem with pot shots against national politicians he knows nothing about) and risk losing his good ole boy status with the program. Why not just work for UF?

 

[78]

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.

 

[T REX]

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.

Sorry I can only give you one like. Tom was a legend and a great read. News...on paper. Crazy.

Those were the days.