Editors Note by Stan J. Griffin: I first gained my love of sports, and also great sportwriting as I began to pattern my own designs for a career in sports journalism, by reading and studying the writing styles of great sports writers around the state such as Bill Lumpkin, Clyde Bolton, Paul Finebaum and Jimmy Bryan. Many of my favorite writers, however, have gained their reputations with their good work right here with The Tuscaloosa News. These include Cecil Hurt, Al Browning, Billy Mitchell , Andrew Carroll and Herman Fuselier among others, and last but certainly not least Tommy Deas, a consistent and strong veteran reporter and editor for the paper. I found it kind of cool that he notes that he alsobasically learned the art of sportswriting by reading scribes such as Mitchell and Browning. I have always found Tommy Deas very easy and smooth to read, but I have also found him to be a very nice and engaging person, and a very helpful type, even with somewhat of a quirky personality which is typical of many writers, including myself. Even going back to my days at UA with The Crimson White, he was always a person I felt comfortable talking with and asking questions of, even if we were just comparing our predictions of the upcoming Alabama football game or whatever. Not surprisingly, when I requested an interview with him for our website, he was quickly agreeable to doing so, and he even took a few extra days to return his answers to me so that he would have time to put thoughtful energy and effort into sharing his thoughts. I very much appreciate his help and friendship, and I think you will find the reflections of a very talented journalist insightful and entertaining.
THE SPORTS CONNECTION: As the primary reporter for the Alabama softball team, you have been able to cover what has become a perennial championship contender and of course a team that finally gained its first, and the SEC's first national championship last season. Is it too early yet to see signs of a team that has a chance to repeat its title?
TOMMY DEAS: With an elite pitcher like Jackie Traina to go along with a lineup that includes Kayla Braud and Kaila Hunt -- a great one-two punch with speed and average -- Alabama is a bona fide contender to repeat. On the other hand, UA lost the six seniors who were the heart and soul of that national championship run and have a lot of new starters in key places. I thought coming into the season that this team might struggle early and then we'd find out by the end of April how the pieces fit together. This team may be one that needs to take a few lumps while sorting things out, but Patrick Murphy's teams always tend to hit their stride in the last third of the season. I think by May this team will be among the elite.
TSC: Considering the mix of returning veterans and talented newcomers such as Haylie McCleney, and perhaps much more pitching depth than Alabama has had in years, would you say this edition of the Crimson Tide might have the ingredients for its most talented team yet. What do you see as this team's main strengths.
TD: I already call her Haylie Softball. She's an amazing talent, and last weekend outfielder Andrea Hawkins started to show sparks of her potential. This is a very talented team, but last year's squad was very senior-heavy with a lot of leadership and experience. Alabama has speed at the top of the lineup and power bats in Hunt and Traina, but UA will need another power hitter to emerge to maximize its potential. The talent is there, but a lot of it is young talent that will need to be forged by the SEC wars.
TSC: Who are some of the main teams that you feel that may have the best chance of standing in the way of the Tide repeating as SEC and national champs?
TD: Oklahoma has everything back, including an elite pitcher in Keilani RIcketts and some of the top home run hitters in the game. It's a scary lineup. Arizona State has proven talent and also an elite pitcher in Dallas Escobedo. I'd add Cal, which has been knocking at the door for the last few years, and SEC contenders Tennessee, Florida, LSU and Missouri as other teams that can make some real noise. UCLA's roster is as impressive as any if the Bruins can put it all together.
TSC: Although I know that every sports staff member of The News shares in coverage of various college and high school sports, how are the main coverage beats determined, such as softball and baseball, I know that softball beat has turned out to be a great one for you.
TD: Beats are assigned and we have a veteran staff. Andrew Carroll is the best utility infielder in the game, will cover a high school golf match with the same enthusiasm as an Alabama football game. His primary beat is high schools, but he can fill in for anything and has a great attitude. Cecil Hurt is the voice of our sports section, and he is also the UA basketball beat writer and a key member of our football coverage team. Aaron Suttles has taken over Alabama baseball and knows how to grind on a beat with a long, demanding season and find fresh stories. Chase Goodbread is our No. 1 on UA football and I'll put him up with any college football beat writer in the country.We hired Andrew Bone, the King Leonidis of UA football recruiting, for our Tidesports.com website and he owns that beat (with support from Aaron). I cover Alabama softball as a primary beat and help out on football and wherever else I can be useful. Ideally I'd like to have one more full-time staff member to cover Alabama gymnastics, but we have found talented interns to cover that important beat the last two years. It's a team effort.
TSC: How long have you been with the Tuscaloosa News now, and is the job still as fun as it has always been for you? I know very well the job has many ups and downs, but what still makes this job a rewarding for you?
TD: I started as a stringer for The Tuscaloosa News when I got my driver's license. The late, great Al Browning recruited me, and I worked part-time through college. I interned at the Birmingham News under the watchful eye of Ron Ingram, probably the greatest prep beat writer in the history of this state, and did five years or so in Nashville with the Nashville Banner and a start-up publication, The Sports Page, which lasted about a year and was a very rewarding experience. I came back to Tuscaloosa to work for my father and joined the staff at The News full-time in 1993. I have been executive sports editor for about five years now. The challenge, and the reward, of the job is to take all the pieces on the table to put together the best possible sports section each day, a process that relies not only on our writers but on the copy desk/design team of Harold Stout, Edwin Stanton and Damien Martin. I love planning and finding ways to improve our coverage. We reach out to papers across the country each year to find new approaches, and I borrow heavily from everywhere -- Us and People magazines, airline magazines, posters, anything that catches my eye. Two years ago we adapted an idea from the Indianapolis Star to our Alabama football coverage. Last year it was the Boston Globe. I say, mostly jokingly: "They invented it. Let's perfect it." By that I mean let's take the basic idea and put our stamp on it and adapt it to what we do. We strive to find new and interesting ways to package information and tell stories and to serve our readers.
TSC: I know that you have worked with a lot of sports reporters and columnists throughout the years while at The News. Tell me your general thoughts about the current group of individuals who comprise the paper's sports coverage at the current time, such as how they work together, the camarederie, etc.
TD: We have a great blend of talent and experience. We've spent a lot of time together and work well together. We have a lot of fun. I love long drives to road games with Cecil Hurt passing the time talking about professional wrestling, I enjoy watching Andrew Carroll grind and work the phones and get more done in four hours than most people can get done in a week, I get great joy working out a big project tossing around ideas with Chase Goodbread and Aaron Suttles, I marvel at the amount of recruiting information Andrew Bone can shake loose every single day of the year, and one of the highlights of every day of the year is picking up our paper and seeing what Harold, Edwin and Damien have done to package it all together to create another daily miracle.
TSC: Your staff was recently able to cover Alabama's third national championship in football in four years. Has it gotten to be somewhat old hat covering UA championship teams such as football, gymnastics and softball, as well as other sports, or is there still somewhat of an element of excitement having the opportunity to cover various teams on the championship stage?
TD: It never gets old. It's a lot of fun to cover any team as a beat, watching story lines unfold and getting to know the players and coaches -- championship season or not. To me, the two greatest things to cover are a major bowl game, like a BCS championship, where you get to spend a week or so in a city and see two teams build up to a big game, and the Women's College World Series, where Alabama has made a habit of going so often. I love Oklahoma City and over the years have created great friendships with people like ESPN.com's Graham Hays, Amy Symons Hughes, Raymond Hesse (a former State Department spy who tells great stories of international intrigue as well as softball stories) -- people who love that sport as much as I do and appreciate the awesomeness of the Cattlemen's Steakhouse down by the stockyards.. It's all fun, all rewarding.
TSC: Keeping with football, what are your general feelings about what Nick Saban has been able to accomplish at UA, and has that dramatic level of success and immediacy of the turnaround of the UA program under Saban amazed you or surprised you in any way?
TD: Incredible, of course. I had little doubt that Saban would win at Alabama, and win big. I remember when he was at LSU thinking he was the most organized and intelligent coach in college football, but even then I had no idea that he would continue to strive to get better and to always cover every contingency. It's amazing to watch how he assembles a staff, a recruiting class, and how he runs that organization so tightly. People on the outside think he hates the media, but he uses the media to get points across to his team and to fans. He will sometimes go off at a press conference and we're all grinning, we can see it coming a mile away, but that part isn't what projects to the people watching the press conference from the outside. He will say he won't answer a question about this or that, but if you ask after he gets done fuming he will give you a thorough and complete answer. I don't think he treats the media any different than he treats anyone else. We're not that special.
TSC: What do you think Saban's success at Alabama has done to cement his legacy as a college coach, and what do you think this program is capable of if he elects to stay in Tuscaloosa for even 6 to 7 more years?
TD: He is the greatest coach of his era and one of the greatest of all time. That's his legacy if he quit tomorrow or if he coaches for 10 more years. The results speak for themselves. It's like that song from the old James Bond movie, nobody does it better.
TSC: Does it get harder each year to cover a championship team even better, knowing that fans are hungry to read anything they can get their hands on when it regards a championship, and also knowing these papers are such great championship keepsakes for these fans and athletes too? Is there a certain formula for this type of championship coverage that your staff has found works pretty good each year?
TD: I think I addressed this above. If you look at our game coverage and our day-by-day coverage over the years, you will see it evolve slowly. I think it's better now than it has ever been. The tough thing often is players who are good for a long time, you can run out of new stories to tell. I mean, how many times and ways can you tell the story of Barrett Jones as a football player, a student and as being the kind of human being that anyone wants their son or daughter to grow up to be? But there are always new players, new angles to explore.
TSC: What are your favorite types of stories to do, in terms of what you find most rewarding or what you get the most satisfaction from, would it be the in-depth stories, the on-the-spot stories or the columns you do from time to time?
TD: The process behind writing the best stories, the ones that give me the most satisfaction, is like giving birth. There is pain and joy involved. The best story I have ever written, which was last year, was about a boxer from Tuscaloosa who had passed away -- Edgar "Mad Dog" Ross. I spent about a week on it, tracking down people who knew him and could fill in the pieces of his life. I talked to one lady probably 15 times or more. I know she got tired of me calling. But I always needed one more detail, one more fact that contained a greater truth. I wanted to get it right. And when you sit down to write something like that, you just get in a zone sometimes and you can't stop until you get it done. Then you look at it and mark it up with a red pen and say, 'That's not it.' And you try to shape and mold it and tell the story. I took a creative writing class when I was a student at the University of Alabama. I probably learned a lot, but this is what I remember: one quote. It comes from the late Russian playwrite Anton Chekhov and it sums it up. "Writing is the art of rewriting what you have already rewritten." I have read that Hemingway wrote the last paragraph of "The Sun Also Rises" like 37 times before he got it right. That's what writing is.
TSC: More and more newspapers, both in the state and nationwide, have decreased in the days they are printing editions, and many papers and magazines have now gone strictly to an online format. Is that something that you ever envisioned, and is The News committed to maintaining a print version of the paper for those who still prefer that traditional format? What do you think are some of the positives and negatives to the dramatic transition we have seen over the past few years to online journalism?
TD: That doesn't seem to be the direction we are going. Halifax, the company that owns The Tuscaloosa News, believes in community newspapers and in the print product. Of course the web is part of life, and we devote a lot of resources to our Tidesports.com website, but I love the print product. It's what I grew up with. Print, web, apps -- those are just delivery systems. Information is the product. The only thing that is really different from when I got started all those years ago is that you can deliver that information around the clock. There's an urgency there every day. But it's sort of like that old Bear Bryant saying: the same things win that have always won, we just have a lot of new excuses. The same things are important as when I was getting started, it's just a different way of delivering it.
TSC: You have been able to cover a wide variety of subjects, both on the local, college and even professional level. Who have been some of the favorites that you've been able to cover and maintain good relationships with? Not asking you to mention names, but are there coaches/athletes that for whatever reason you got off on the wrong foot with and for that reason the relationship was never a really good one?
TD: It's all about relationships. You build trust with people as you work with them. Oftentimes you'll write something that they don't like, but over time a mutual understanding and respect evolves. I'll give you a story from my younger days covering Alabama football. One time I wrote something, I don't even remember what, and Gene Stallings called me into his office and cussed me out like a Somali pirate. I was kind of stunned and just sat there speechless. Sometime later, I wrote about a couple of players who got suspended for the Auburn game for having beer in their room the night before in the team hotel. Stallings called me to his office and the exchange went a little something like this:
Stallings: "Why the @#$@#$ would you write a bunch of @#(*$&@$57@ like that?"
Me: "I wouldn't @(&@)(*%^&*^$% have to write some &$#!)**$! like that if your #$%&*)& players weren't drinking in their *&&#@%$!$$!&* rooms!!!"
Stallings paused for a minute, and grinned and said, "Well, I guess you got a point there," and we laughed about it. I think I got his respect there, and we got along famously after that. I'll give you another great relationship. I first met Lance Tucker when he was about 6 years old. His father was coach at Gordo High School at the time and he invited me over to their house to interview him on about his quarterback, Tim Garner, who was declared ineligible (and ended up transferring to Tuscaloosa Academy and playing in college at North Alabama, if I recall correctly). When I got to the house, young Lance is helpin his daddy break down game film at 6 year old. Fast-forward and Lance becomes starting QB at Fayette High (where his father migrated to from Gordo) in seventh grade. He becomes the state's all-time leading passer, signs with Alabama and ends up starting a game or two but mostly serving as a backup, so I cover him at UA. Well, Lance's father, Waldon Tucker, goes on to become Alabama's all-time winningest high school football coach. And Lance ends up as his successor at Fayette starting a couple of years ago. And his brother Luke, who I also covered, is an assistant. So every year I try to get down there to cover a game, even though I spend most of my Friday night's in the office running the "war room" when Alabama isn't on a long road trip. I've known the Tuckers for a long, long time now, and it's like a reunion every time I get to see them. That's the kind of thing that makes me feel old, but also warms my heart when I get to see them.
TSC: Who are some of the people both at The News and throughout the media world that have served as some of your mentors/influences in terms of your career?
TD: I have had so many. Al Browning and Billy Mitchell in my early days at The Tuscaloosa News, Ron Ingram and Jimmy Bryan at the Birmingham News, Mike McGehee at the Nashville Banner, I could go on and on. Gerry Ahern, who runs the sports operation at USA Today, is a guy who has gone out of his way to help me grow as an editor, and Paul Skrbina, who is the prep editor at the Chicago Tribune. These people and so many more have taught me more than they will ever know.
TSC: Maybe also list some of the writers, journalists that are some of your favorites even today and that you find yourself often reading or listening to.
TD: Kent Babb of the Washington Post has a gift and I tell all my interns to read him. A.J. Liebling is my favorite sports writer ever. The late novelist Robert Parker, I have read every one of his books I think. I mentioned Graham Hays of ESPN.com earlier. There's a lot of great writing out there.
TSC: What do you feel are the main strengths of The News in terms of your ability to cover sports in an accurate, objective and also entertaining way?
TD: As noted, we have a veteran staff. No one on our sports staff is up for rookie of the year. There is a great institutional knowledge and memory on our staff. When something happens, we're in good position to put it into perspective. And we all love what we do.
TSC: At what age did you know that writing was your main strength and that you wanted to make a career out of doing this, and was sports reporting always your main objective or desire?
TD: It was early. I basically learned to read by reading the sports section of The Tuscaloosa News. I was writing for The News before I was writing for the high school newspaper. I guess I've always known, and I am very fortunate to be in the position I am in today.
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