The Long, Slow Fall of a Gridiron God

By Loren Feldman GQ December,1988 Art Schlichter is scrambling. Running late, headed from his father’s farm in Bloomingburg, Ohio, to the Springfield Antique Show and Flea Market, he flips on his Road Patrol XK radar detector and hits the gas, challenging the two-lane...

Dean Smith

By Will Blythe From To Hate Like This is to Be Happy Forever 2007 Soon after I returned to Chapel Hill , I had arranged to visit with Dean Smith, the former North Carolina head coach. I dressed up for the occasion, although these days the journalist in me had become...

Bear Bryant’s Miracles

By Richard Price Playboy October 1979 Because I grew up in a multiethnic environment in New York City, the South has always conjured up some bad news reactions on word-association tests for me: Klan, lynch, redneck, moonshine, speed-trap towns and death … lots...

Swee’pea and the Shark

By Ivan Solotaroff Esquire November 1992 Bald, bone-white, wearing baggy sweats and clunky sneakers, Jerry “Tark the Shark” Tarkanian looks like a cross between Mr. Magoo and Yertle the Turtle as he paces the length of the hardwood floor of the Blossom Athletic Center...

The Asphalt Junkie

By Scott Raab GQ October 1992 Cleveland State University hired Kevin Mackey to coach men’s basketball in 1983, the summer I graduated. No one gave a shit, me least of all. The team had gone 8-and-20, and Mackey was some no-name Boston College assistant. Besides, like...

The Mark of Excellence

By John Schulian Inside Sports March 1981 It was some big boat, all right—a ’79 Lincoln Continental, long as a city block, blue with a white top and enough chrome to make it look like a rolling mirror. When it steamed out of Chicago’s West Side last year, there wasn’t...

The Sporting Life

By Nik Cohn Inside Sports February 1981 In Atlantic City, Willie Mays played an elderly game, serving as designated greeter at Bally’s Park Place Hotel. After the fracas of his hiring, when Bowie Kuhn barred him from baseball, he settled into a gentle routine of...

Little Looie

By Tony Kornheiser Street & Smith Basketball Annual 1975 Little Looie has his recruiting budget for the year spread out in front of him in little piles—100 subway tokens, 50 bus transfers, and two $5 gift certificates from Orange Julius. He’s on the phone,...

Willie Morris And The Courting of Marcus Dupree

By Allen Barra Inside Sports May 1985 It’s hard to think back on this story now without sadness. You hear so often about some running back who could have been the greatest. Well, Marcus really was the greatest, or at least he could have been. I’ve never seen...

The Next Superstar

By Charles P. Pierce The New York Times Magazine November 15, 1992 A summer storm cell breaks, purplish and powerful, over the North Park Baptist Church on the north side of Orlando. Hard rain drums speedy and loud off the rusted tin portico of the recreation center,...

Pistol Pete’s Last Shot

By David Halberstam Inside Sports April 1980 They are slow this day at the baggage counter at the Seattle airport, and the players—up too early for the flight after a game the night before, anxious to get on with it, to get to the hotel so they can practice and then...

The Relentless Scrimmage of Dean Smith

By Gary Smith Inside Sports March 1982 THE COACH—Why should I win? Why should I feel fine tonight? Why should my friends and the ones who think they’re my friends stand out there pretending to wait for the traffic to thin when they’re really waiting to pump my hand...