Arizona Republic sports — and sports editor — transitioning into new world

Sports is always about transition.

There is the transition from one season to another. In hockey and soccer, constant transition from offense to defense and back is the flow of those sports. The NBA even has statistical categories that track and measure transition offense and defense.

Here at The Arizona Republic, we’re embarking today on a transition of our own.

The Sunday newspaper you’re reading has a new look and feel, and the sports section is part of this transformation, built on visually grabbing imagery and strong local journalism that shows off the depth of our coverage of the most important teams, personalities and developments in Arizona sports.

The goal is to have this newly imagined product work in tandem with our website, azcentral.com, the go-to home of breaking news and live sports coverage. The Sunday newspaper experience will complement all of that by showcasing the expertise of our staff, spending time with stories that both look ahead and celebrate our shared past. It will be full of opinion, strong feature writing and team analysis.

It will be a Sunday magazine of a sort, a place to spend some time leaning into a topic, or exploring the rich history of Arizona sports.

This transition has been a long time coming, right? Regular readers of The Republic understand that night events and live coverage is not something the print newspaper can own any longer. And, really, there’s no reason for it, not with our vibrant website and social-media footprint that report in real time everything sports fans are looking for. This is also part of the transition — giving print readers tools to quickly access our digital content via QR codes.

We believe this tipoff edition of the new Sunday Republic shows off what you can expect every weekend.

As we introduce this new experience to you, there is one more transition I need to share.

This edition is the final Sunday paper under my watch as sports editor of The Republic. I am retiring after just shy of 44 years in journalism, the past 21 here in Phoenix where, hopefully, I’ve helped make sense of the evolving scene in one of the greatest sports towns in America.

There simply is no place that comes close to matching what we have here, even if our pro teams underachieve much of the time. Since arriving in the fall of 2003, I have been involved in the coverage of six college football championship or semifinal games, four Super Bowls (including the Cardinals in 2009 at Tampa), four NASCAR Cup championship races, four WNBA Finals, the NBA Finals, the World Series, the Pac-12 football championship game, and all-star games for MLB, NBA and NFL. Add to that the Cactus League, the best-attended golf tournament in the world, countless bowl games and pro playoff runs, and a robust local high school and college sports scene.

Whew!

It’s what brought me here in the first place, this steady lineup of events that regularly put Phoenix in the spotlight. What I didn’t expect — and what became the ultimate benefit of working here — was how great the people are, both in my professional and personal lives, and how utterly amazing the West is to experience.

It was hanging out in Flagstaff when the Cardinals spent summer camps up there. It was seeing the Diamondbacks play at three of their NL West rivals’ ballparks (and Denver, you’re next). It was seeing the Coyotes play in LA and Anaheim, and visiting Camp Tontozona, site of Arizona State football’s annual pilgrimage.

Being a newspaper (and website) sports editor has been more thrilling a ride than I could ever have imagined when the first opportunity came along nearly 35 years ago. I’d been an NFL beat writer covering the New York Giants for the Bridgeport (Conn.) Post, but that ended as the company moved into a new direction. The publisher called me into his office and said they had a new position for me: sports assignment and layout editor. I thought about it for a moment, and replied something to the effect of, isn’t that what the sports editor does? He smiled. I’m pretty sure this was a test, to see how I’d handle the transition (that word again). In less than a month, he went all the way and appointed me sports editor.

In all the years that have transpired, I never lost sight of the fact that our job is to connect readers with the teams and sports they love. We have insider access they can only dream of, and even in this 24/7 era of content generation, where teams have, virtually, opened their doors more than ever to the public, what we do still matters. How we report and analyze the news, how we interact with readers, remains vital to the sports arena. We are still independent. We do not root for anything other than good stories to tell, great personalities to cover. Sure, having the local teams win is great, because it brings more readers and fans to us. So if the Suns are going to be in the playoffs, we might as well hope for them to go all the way!

You hear retiring athletes talk about the thing they’ll miss most is being with their teammates, and it’s the same for me. The people we meet and work with make all the difference in our lives. For me, it’s a very long list of folks who made this journey so special: being amazed and challenged by amazing journalists at the three newspapers where I’ve worked; getting to know athletes, coaches and administrators along the way; and even forcing relationships with “constant readers,” as Stephen King calls them, people who don’t just complain when we get something wrong or don’t cover a story, but want to understand what we do and offer constructive feedback. I'm here to tell you we wouldn't want it any other way.

From here on out, I’ll be joining all of you on the sidelines. No, that’s not quite right. With our friends at The Republic and azcentral showing the way, we have front-row seats and insider access to the good, bad and everything in between.

Otherwise, you can find me on a hiking trail, or at a National Park, wherever the mood takes me. As Johnny Cash once sang, “From now on I'm free to do what I desire.”

See you at the ballpark.