A Front-Row Seat with the Sportswriters Who Sat There
Sit down with host Todd Jones and other sportswriters who knew the greatest athletes and coaches, and experienced first-hand some of the biggest sports moments in the past 50 years. They’ll share stories behind the stories -- some they’ve only told to each other.
Geoff Calkins: “It Turned into a Prince Concert in the Press Conference.”
Geoff Calkins takes us to Memphis, where he has been a high-profile fixture in the sports media scene for 27 years. He tells us about the indefatigable Hubie Brown, a voicemail from the volatile Jerry West, and what the view was like from atop John Calipari’s enemies list. Geoff explains the torture of writing on deadline at an overtime NCAA championship game. He recalls his struggles as a baseball beat reporter and what it was like to cover a Mike Tyson heavyweight championship fight. And he shares a tale involving exotic food at an Olympics. Oh my. Geoff also explains how his childhood leukemia led to writing, and why sports journalism lured him out of a career in law.
Calkins has been named the best sports columnist in the country four times by the Associated Press Sports Editors and is a member of the Scripps Howard Hall of Fame. He recently moved to general news columnist at The Daily Memphian, where he had been writing a sports column since 2018 after spending the previous 22 years as the sports columnist for the Commercial Appeal in Memphis. He still hosts “The Geoff Calkins Show,” his sports radio program since 2010, five days a week. His 2016 book, “After the Jump,” chronicles how the Memphis sports scene grew over two decades.
Before moving to Memphis, Calkins covered the Florida Marlins for the Sun-Sentinel of South Florida from 1994-96, and he was a high school sports reporter at the Anniston Star in Alabama for two years. Geoff had previously been a clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, and a labor and employment attorney in Washington D.C. Switching from a law career to sports writing at age 31 eventually took Calkins to eight Olympics, multiple Super Bowls, World Series, and Masters golf tournaments. He has won various journalism awards, including a first-place honor in the 2022 APSE contest for a feature story looking back 20 years at Tyson’s loss to Lennox Lewis in Memphis.
Calkins graduated from Harvard in 1983 and from Harvard Law in ’87. He served as editor-in-chief for the school’s paper, The Harvard Independent, and worked summer internships for Time Life and the Miami Herald. He earned a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism. Calkins grew up outside Buffalo, New York as the eighth of nine children.
You can follow him on X: @geoff_calkins
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Geoff Calkins edited transcript
PBA_Geoff Calkins
Speakers: Todd Jones & Geoff Calkins
Todd Jones (00:01):
Hey, folks, a quick note. Check out our new Press Box Access Channel on YouTube. You'll see a wide variety of clips from interviews such as Dave Kindred comparing Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus, or Peter King recalling his early days of covering Bill Parcells and Lawrence Taylor.
Todd Jones (00:15):
You can also, listen to entire episodes on the YouTube channel. And while you're there, hit the subscribe button. Hey, it's free, and I might buy you a beer.
Todd Jones (00:24):
Okay, let's roll this episode.
Todd Jones (00:29):
I used to run into Geoff Calkins on the road a lot back in my days as a sportswriter. We'd be at the same events with a lot of the same writers sent by other newspapers. It was a traveling circus of misfit toys.
Todd Jones (00:39):
Geoff knows that road well after 30 years, most of those spent as the voice of Memphis, where a few times he's been honored by the APSE as best sports columnist in the country.
Todd Jones (00:50):
But the road Geoff took to get to that road, well, that was a little different, at least among most other ink-stained retches. We're going to talk about that path and hear some other stories from his years behind the keyboard.
Todd Jones (01:02):
Hey, Geoff, come on into the tavern. Welcome.
Geoff Calkins (01:08):
Well, it's good to be here, Todd, and nice to see you again.
Todd Jones (01:51):
You recently moved from sports to general news column for The Daily Memphian. I'm just curious, all those years, 30 years yourself of doing sports, why to switch into news. I know you're still doing a sports radio show, but why write about other things right now?
Geoff Calkins (02:08):
Yeah, I mean, I still do the radio show from 9:00 to 11:00, but really what happened is really two things. One is, as you know, it's a grind.
Geoff Calkins (02:17):
Being a sportswriter, being a columnist in a city like Memphis, when Ja Morant wakes up one morning with a — you wake up one morning and Ja has a gun on Instagram, there goes your Saturday. When he has does it again, there goes another Saturday. Grizzlies games, Tiger. There's a lot of games.
Geoff Calkins (02:39):
And it felt like, honestly, like I was doing the same thing I'd done for 30 years, but because access had changed, the world had changed, I was doing it less well, honestly.
Geoff Calkins (02:51):
But then the other real reason is that it has been a hell of a year in Memphis for a couple of reasons. Then there were a couple of really signature tragedies. One is a woman named Eliza Fletcher was abducted, jogging, and murdered. And that became a sort of symbol of a crime crisis in the city.
Geoff Calkins (03:19):
And the second was that Tyre Nichols was killed by Memphis Police, and murdered really by Memphis Police.
Geoff Calkins (03:30):
And I remember covering sports, and there's other times when you wonder whether you're writing about the right thing, or.
Geoff Calkins (03:38):
But I was at a Grizzlies game during this period, and I just thought, "You know what? As much as I care about Memphis sports, I care about the city more. And if I could write and contribute anything to the issues that are sort of roiling Memphis right now, that I'd like to take a shot at doing that."
Todd Jones (04:51):
Well, I really applaud you for the move. I mean, and you're such a part of the community. You've been there, what, 27 years.
Todd Jones (04:56):
So, people do know you and they have learned to trust you. And maybe they don't agree with you, but they know where you're coming from. They know who you are. And that says a lot about the community and yourself and that type of relationship.
Todd Jones (05:09):
And you don't necessarily have to be at the 2008 NCA Men's Basketball Championship game.
We've talked deadline with some writers.
Todd Jones (06:58):
Can you put us in that place? Memphis is winning, I think by 9 or 11. 11 with two minutes to go.
Geoff Calkins (07:06):
Yeah. They're up by 11.
Todd Jones (07:07):
You've got a column due because you're the Memphis guy. What the hell was it like for you on deadline when all of a sudden Kansas comes scrambling back and Mario Chalmers hits a three at the top of the key to force overtime.
Geoff Calkins (07:19):
I mean, it's gutting not because it's Memphis losing. It's because what happens is that ... I mean, I was never great on deadline. Some people are wonders on deadline, and I was never great on game columns on deadline. I would, the old Red Smith line, open up a vein and bleed. Like that's sort of what I was like.
Geoff Calkins (07:40):
But you're working on two columns. I think the deadline was 10 minutes after, and on the one, it's Memphis finally wins a championship after all these years of Larry Finch and that team in ‘72, ‘73 losing to Bill Walton and then the Dana Kirk team that went to the Final Four.
Geoff Calkins (08:03):
And now, here finally with John Calipari and Derrick Rose, and Chris Douglas-Roberts, they're going to win a championship for a city that really had never had a championship of any sort.
Geoff Calkins (08:14):
So, you're trying to capture that in one file, and then you have this crushing loss, whatever it is, in the other file. And yes, you're putting in live stuff that's happening along the way, but you're really building two separate columns.
Geoff Calkins (08:29):
And with about three minutes left, you realize Memphis is going to win. So, you abandon the lose column, and you just focus on writing the civic celebration column.
Geoff Calkins (08:43):
And then Chalmers hits that shot and you just curse. I mean, it's impossible because there's no way, I can't capture this in 7 minutes or 13 or whatever. I don't remember how many it was. At that point, I called and I said, “You got to gimme an extra 10 minutes or something here.” And then-
Todd Jones (09:11):
Did they give it you?
Geoff Calkins (09:12):
Yeah, I got an extra 10 minutes. It was a big event, but it was ... I mean, oh God, what an awful ... I mean, it was cliche in the end, what it-
Todd Jones (09:27):
It was survive in advance even for the writers.
Geoff Calkins (09:29):
It was just absolute hell. It was absolute hell. There's just no other way to describe it. And even now, when something happens in any big game, and I'm not there, that's that dramatic, you just feel for the people in the press box.
Todd Jones (09:46):
Oh, yeah. That's a natural reaction. I've been out of the business for six years, and if I am watching a game late at night and something does happen, my first thought is, “Those poor bastards typing away.”
Geoff Calkins (09:59):
Exactly right. It's those poor bastards. That's just true.
Todd Jones (11:35):
Well, you know what, Geoff, on that crazy night, when you were sitting there bleeding on the keyboard, you were doing exactly what you wanted to do as a child. And I want to go back to your love of writing.
Todd Jones (11:47):
And I want to take you back to, you're in the third grade, and I don't think a lot of people know about this, but at the time, as a child, you had leukemia. And you're in bed at the Buffalo Children's Hospital, and your mother would bring something to your room every day. What did she bring?
Geoff Calkins (12:07):
Yeah, she brought a typewriter, and it's really-
Todd Jones (12:10):
Like an old manual typewriter?
Geoff Calkins (12:12):
She'd haul in a typewriter. And I would dictate stories and she would type them up. And I look back, so, I was diagnosed in the late '60s with childhood leukemia at a time when it was a death sentence.
Geoff Calkins (12:31):
Like right now, 95% … it's the miracle. Like the cancer miracle is childhood leukemia, which went from being everybody died to now, pretty much everybody lives. It's really one of the incredible advances.
Geoff Calkins (12:45):
But that hadn't happened yet. And so, when I was diagnosed, I was in third grade and I had shingles. And that's what, "Why does he have shingles?" And then my parents were doctors, and they immediately felt my spleen. My spleen was big. And so, I go into the hospital.
Geoff Calkins (13:07):
And later on, I had my mom on the radio show, we didn't talk about any of this much, but now years later, I said, "What was it like when I was diagnosed?" And she said, "I thought it would be easier if you'd been hit by a truck, because the end was going to be the end."
Geoff Calkins (13:23):
But my dad was in academic medicine, and so, he knew a doctor in New York who was starting on a new protocol. And I happened to get lucky enough to be included in the new protocol.
Geoff Calkins (13:39):
And so, right now, you see kids who are leukemia survivors from the first class of them, and they're basically my age. They're in their 60s, their young 60s or late 50s.
Geoff Calkins (13:52):
But anyway, so yeah, I'd lie in bed, and mom, she'd come in and I'd dictate stories, and then we'd send it back to the third grade class. And then everyone in that class would have to write me a story. I was the kid with cancer in the class. And so, I'd get a story from everyone, whatever.
Geoff Calkins (14:09):
But really, ever since then, I thought of myself as a writer. Like it was my mom typing those stories as I dictated them to her that made me think I like words and I like telling stories. And I lost my way along the way a little bit, but I got back to it. And now, I can't imagine having done anything else. I really can't.
Todd Jones (16:37):
Well, you became one, but you mentioned you took a detour. You go to Harvard, and you study history, and you're working for the school paper, and you've got a couple internships. You worked for Time Life in the summer, you're at Miami Herald.
Geoff Calkins (18:13):
And then what happens is, I applied to Harvard Law School just to see if I'd get in. I didn't apply to 15 law schools. And I got in. And I don't know if they still say it, but what back then they would say is, you can do anything with a law degree. That was it. You can do anything with a law degree.
Geoff Calkins (18:29):
And how do you turn down Harvard Law School? So, I said, "Well, I'll go to Harvard Law School."
Todd Jones (19:05):
I mean, talk about polar opposites, sports writing and law. First of all, you're at Harvard Law, I'm at Kentucky. You're majoring in law, I'm majoring in beer. I'm going to be a sportswriter, you're going to go solve the world's problems as an attorney.
Todd Jones (19:16):
And you became one for a firm in Washington, DC. I believe it was Hogan & Hartson. And you had a colleague this guy named John Roberts Supreme Court Chief Justice. You're making money, you're making billable hours.
Todd Jones (19:31):
And then at age 30, I think 31. 1991.
Geoff Calkins (19:35):
Yeah. 30, I went back to journalism. Yeah.
Todd Jones (19:37):
You decide, "You know what? I don't want billable hours as an attorney. I'm going to go back and do this sports writing thing." You took a job making $225 hours a week in Anniston, Alabama, covering high schools.
What the hell were you thinking?
Geoff Calkins (19:50):
Well, first, John Roberts was a colleague, but let's be honest, John Roberts was a partner at the law firm where I worked. And I was an associate. He was vaguely aware of my name, but it was interesting.
Geoff Calkins (20:08):
One of my friends was a Supreme Court clerk because I had clerked on the US Court of Appeals and he worked for Antonin Scalia. And so, there was one day he said, "Hey, we're going jogging today. You want to come jogging with me and the Justice?" And so, I went jogging with Antonin Scalia.
Geoff Calkins (20:24):
Like it was the quote unquote “heady world of law”. And I hated it. I just hated it. Hated it in a way that, you know how when you're writing papers in college, and you have to will yourself through it hour by hour. "Alright, Let's go work for four hours on this." That's how it felt.
Geoff Calkins (20:56):
It was awful. I had the most fun. And honestly, it wasn't just like, "Oh, I just decided to do something else." I don't know what an emotional breakdown is, but I was drinking too much. I was becoming a profound hypochondriac. I was sort of falling apart in my career.
Todd Jones (21:12):
Well, actually you sound like a sportswriter.
Geoff Calkins (21:15):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, I had felt like I'd done everything right and I was miserably unhappy. And so, yes, I took a job in Anniston and I don't know for sure-
Todd Jones (21:28):
This is after you got your master’s at Columbia. So, you decided to make that leap at age 30 to, I'm going into something that used to be, "Oh, that's not a serious job." And you take a job down in Alabama current high schools.
Todd Jones (24:33):
So, Geoff, you moved on to your first big boy job when you went down to the Sun Sentinel in Florida, Fort Lauderdale to cover Major League Baseball. And that's not an easy beat.
Todd Jones (24:47):
You're in your early 30s, but you're kind of young to the job of sports writing. What was it like to jump into Major League Baseball and the challenges that you faced with that?
Geoff Calkins (24:56):
It was really hard, honestly, and I wasn't very good at it. Fred Turner was the sports editor there.
And he would take chances on people.
Geoff Calkins (25:40):
And he took a massive chance on me because I'd only worked in the business for a year and a half, two years. Anniston was an afternoon paper, so I really wasn't writing deadline stuff. And baseball, as you point out, is a hellacious beat.
Geoff Calkins (25:55):
And I was lucky that Gordon Edes was the beat writer. Like Gordon Edes had done the first year of the Marlins, and he wanted to be the national writer and have someone do most of the games. That was the idea. And so, I came in as the beat writer.
Geoff Calkins (26:11):
And so, Gordon was just a massive help. He's a unbelievably gifted writer, reporter, just the five-tool guy. Like he's unbelievable. So, he was a huge help.
Geoff Calkins (27:06):
And honestly, baseball players are tough and baseball writers are tough. Like I covered hockey down there a little bit, and everyone could've been nicer. Baseball, you feel like even in the baseball writing fraternity, they're sizing you up. And if you don't know who the double A shortstop is for … it felt like, to me anyway.
Todd Jones (27:36):
Was good for you though, at that point?
Geoff Calkins (27:39):
I don't remember it with great joy. I do not remember being a baseball writer with great joy. The best part was the road trips where you get to unpack, that's nice. Being in Denver for three or four days, in San Francisco for three or four days, getting to the ballpark.
Geoff Calkins (28:00):
Rene Lachemann was the manager. He was really nice to me and patient. I'll be honest, it was clear to me anyway, that I was in over my head covering baseball.
Geoff Calkins (28:12):
And so, was it good for me? It was good for me. I got faster on deadline. I learned something about reporting. I learned a lot just watching how Gordon would interact with the players.
Todd Jones (28:25):
In what ways? Just the way he had conversations with him, or?
Geoff Calkins (28:28):
Yeah, just the way he had conversations. He’d walk up and he'd just have conversations with him and then he'd pull out his notebook five minutes into the conversation and write something down.
Geoff Calkins (28:37):
And this is basic stuff, but he wasn't just walking up to someone and beginning the interview now. Like he was in the shed with them. Like he was great at it.
Geoff Calkins (28:47):
And so, to see all that was a trial by fire.
Todd Jones (29:36):
Do you think those lessons you learned as a beat reporter for a couple years on a really tough beat, do you think they helped when you then went on to become a columnist?
Geoff Calkins (29:46):
Oh, yeah. And truthfully, I would've been better served to be a beat writer longer. Like I think that those skills are absolutely critical.
Geoff Calkins (29:59):
And because I didn't start really being a journalist until I was 31 is when I finished journalism school before I went down to Anniston. And I was in a hurry then, but to become a columnist at that point, because I was freaking 31.
Geoff Calkins (30:11):
And so, I would've been better served had I worked at beat for four years or five. I really think I would've been better served. I was somewhat over my head, I was still in over my head, when I got to Memphis. I'd been a sportswriter at that point for four years when I got to be the columnist in Memphis.
Todd Jones (30:33):
Yeah. You show up in Memphis in 1996.
Todd Jones (32:52):
Well, Memphis has changed so much as a sports city since the time you arrived to where it is now. You've been able to document that. You wrote that in your book, After the Jump, your collection of the columns over the 20 year period where the city just exploded on the sports scene. Right?
Geoff Calkins (33:12):
It's been fun.
Geoff Calkins (34:17):
But since I've been here, we've had Calipari and that era in Memphis basketball. Memphis football got to be at least briefly relevant going to the Cotton Bowl and Justin Fuente and Mike Norvell and that era. We had the Tyson-Lewis fight, which was absolutely wild and a lot of fun to cover.
Geoff Calkins (34:45):
And then there was the whole fight about whether to bring the Grizzlies here, are the Grizzlies going to work? And then everything around the Grizzlies and the Zach Randolph Grizzlies. We had Jerry West came to town briefly.
Todd Jones (35:00):
Yeah. Think about that. He had the logo in town. Right.
Geoff Calkins (35:03):
Alan Iversson even more briefly. And now, Ja. We had a year with the Titans, which was its own fiasco in town. So, there's been no shortage of things to cover.
Geoff Calkins (35:19):
Plus, of course, when I first moved here, at that point, as you know, when you were in Cincinnati and Columbus, like Columbus covered the Olympics. You covered the Olympics for Columbus. That's unheard of now. I bet Columbus doesn't. Back then they sent multiple people to the Olympics. Here, I went to eight Olympics as the columnist in Memphis.
I covered a lot of wonderfully fun things across the world.
Geoff Calkins (36:05):
But then what I've really liked being more than anything is I like it when people come up to me in the grocery store and say, “I read your column,” or, “I hate your column.”
Todd Jones (36:51):
Yeah. Think about the things you got to experience, like you just mentioned, trailing the world, all these big events. And being the voice.
Geoff Calkins (36:57):
I got the city. That's the best part.
Todd Jones (36:59):
And being the voice. Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about some more things about Memphis. You mentioned the Grizzlies. When they came in as an NBA franchise in Memphis in 2001, they came in from Vancouver, things really changed.
Todd Jones (37:10):
And you mentioned a particular player I wanted to ask you about, and that's Zach Randolph.
Todd Jones (37:14):
I think you have said that the biggest mistake you ever made was you wrote a column saying that they should not trade for him. And he comes in and he carries the team to seven straight playoffs, there's Believe Memphis towels waving.
Todd Jones (37:28):
When you think about that now looking back, if that was a mistake, what were you wrong about in a moment and how do you look at it now?
Geoff Calkins (37:39):
Well, Z-Bo had a reputation as a bad guy, honestly. At that point, he had gone from Portland, he played for the Knicks, and he played for the Clippers. And in Portland in particular, he had the reputation as a bad guy. And I talked to people in Portland, and they said he was a bad guy.
Geoff Calkins (38:03):
And so, for a franchise in Memphis that really had never had any success of any ... they went to the playoffs three straight years with Pau Gasol, but had never won a game once they got to the playoffs. And so, you have this young team and why bring in a guy who has this ...
Geoff Calkins (38:27):
And the truth of the matter is, so I wrote a column just saying, "Don't do it. This is ridiculous. This is stupid. He's a bad guy.” And you can just look at his rap sheet. He had an extensive rap sheet as well.
Geoff Calkins (38:38):
But I remember Tony Barone, who was assistant GM at the time, he took me aside and he said, “Geoff, you're wrong about this. Like what Z-Bo is, is he's a follower and he's going to be fine." And he came here and he was great.
Geoff Calkins (38:58):
I mean, Z-Bo was absolutely was fun to cover. He led that team to its first playoff win and his first playoff series win over Tim Duncan and the Spurs.
Geoff Calkins (39:09):
And it's not like the incidents went away. Like there were some incidents when he was here where evidently a weed dealer was beaten up by a pool cue at his house or something. I mean, it's not like it all went away.
Geoff Calkins (39:27):
And who knows if in the era of cell phones, if we would've seen more about what Z-Bo was up to, but really became a beloved member of the community. He's just a natural fit in Memphis. This is a tough town, and he's a tough guy. And so, it was a fit right from the beginning.
Todd Jones (39:50):
How did he react to you when he comes to town and you're saying, "Don't trade for this guy." How did he react to you and what kind of working relationship were you able to build with him?
Geoff Calkins (40:00):
He was fine. I don't know that Z-Bo read this stuff, honestly. Z-Bo never struck me as a guy who read this stuff.
Geoff Calkins (40:07):
The guy I once had a issue — not an issue with. I love Tony Allen. I wrote a column, Mark Gasol got hurt one year. And I quoted Tony. The quote was, "Without Mark, we're a makeshift team." That was the quote that went in the column. So, the editors had a pullout quote.
Todd Jones (40:32):
Look out.
Geoff Calkins (40:36):
And they typed it in rather than copying it. So, in the column it said makeshift team. The pullout quote said (literally giant pullout quote), "Without Mark Gasol, we're a makeshift team," Tony Allen.
Geoff Calkins (40:53):
And they explained to him that the editors did it. That the editors did it.
Todd Jones (40:57):
Makeshift team. I love it.
Geoff Calkins (40:59):
He held a grudge for about six months. Z-Bo never held a grudge.
Todd Jones (41:09):
Like I don't want to be the guy who's bemoaning how things have changed, but like that group, Mark Gasol, Mike Connolly, Zach Randolph, Tony, they'd ask about my kids. They knew the names of my kids. That's how it was.
Todd Jones (41:28):
And you could agree to disagree or maybe battle over something a couple days, and then you kind of figured out how, "Okay, we're kind of in this game together. We're going to somehow make this work."
Geoff Calkins (41:40):
Exactly. And now, because there's no relationship, it's very different.
Todd Jones (44:24):
Hey, before we leave the Grizzlies, I want to ask you about one particular coach, and that's the great Hubie Brown.
Todd Jones (44:30):
Now, Hubie Brown in 2002 at age 69 was hired to coach the Grizzlies. He has the two full seasons and a dozen games in 2004. ESPN just extended his deal for its 20th year at age 89. He's in his 50th year associated with the NBA.
Todd Jones (44:52):
What was it like to be around Hubie Brown on a pretty much daily basis for a couple years?
Geoff Calkins (44:59):
It was a gift. And I don't think anyone expected it to be. Like it was a weird ass hire. Like they just hired Jerry West and Jerry West comes in, team gets off to a bad start, fire the coach, who are they going to hire?
Geoff Calkins (45:16):
And you hear Hubie Brown, who's been out of it for 10 years, and the last job he had, it was sort of Hubie stubborn, irascible, getting into it with players, couldn't adapt to the new age of the NBA.
Geoff Calkins (45:31):
When he was fired the last time, he already didn't fit in the modern NBA and here was 10 years later, you're going to hire Hubie Brown? This is insane. I never wrote that, but that's what I thought.
Geoff Calkins (45:44):
And he came in and like it was ... I love hearing Hubie on television and it feels like ...
Geoff Calkins (45:54):
He ended up winning Coach of the Year. He was great. He got a team that had Pau Gasol as their best player. But then their next best player was James Posey, Shane Battier, he was nice, good decent NBA player. But they had no second star, much less third star.
Todd Jones (46:12):
So, why would Hubie be the right guy? Why was he great for that team?
Geoff Calkins (46:16):
Because well, he did a 10-man rotation, two, five man units. Like he treated them like it was college basically. And he had two, five man units. He had Jason Williams, and Shane, and Pau, and Posey. And they busted their ass.
Geoff Calkins (46:34):
Pau who just went into the Hall of Fame is just an incredibly wonderfully skilled player.
Geoff Calkins (46:41):
But he somehow squeezed the most out of them. I mean, it was incredible. And then you couldn't miss the post-game pressors because he'd just hold forth. Like it was Hubie on round ball. It was absolutely must see TV.
Todd Jones (46:55):
Well, give us an example of a moment you remember from Hubie.
Geoff Calkins (46:58):
I don't remember anything in particular. I wish I did, anything in particular he said. What I remember is this though, is that like no one thanks reporters, and we don't do it for thanks.
Geoff Calkins (47:12):
But in the end, when it was over, Hubie like approached me in the hallway and said, "I just want to thank you for covering me the way you have for the last two years. I'm a teacher. And for me to have been back and teaching again for these two years has been one of the great gifts of my life. And I want to thank you for everything you've written about me during this period."
Geoff Calkins (47:45):
Because I don't want to say we were fawning over him, but we realized after a while that what was happening here was special and how much it meant to him to have ...
Geoff Calkins (47:56):
In the end, if you are put on this earth and you just know that you're meant to ... there's some people that are meant to be doing a certain thing.
Geoff Calkins (48:05):
And for Hubie, he is meant to be teaching basketball. And for him to have a chance to do it ... what struck me is it's taken away from him for 10 years. And to have that again, to be given the gift and the opportunity to do it again, and his gratitude at that, how much he reveled in the second chance, and how much he was ultimately grateful to his second chance.
Todd Jones (48:28):
What did you learn as a journalist from being around Hubie?
Geoff Calkins (48:35):
I mean, I'll say this. One thing you do learn is I've never been an X and O guy. I'm never going to challenge a coach particularly on X and Os. That's not what I write about generally.
Geoff Calkins (48:48):
Hubie, and maybe it's more natural now, but the way he would break things down for you and the way … he showed you like I don't know, like it was an education. And that's the way it was.
Geoff Calkins (49:01):
It was the, "Well, these were five things that were happening out there," and, "Oh wow, let me tell you this," and off he'd go. The truth matter is he was easy to cover.
Geoff Calkins (49:12):
Now, at the end, he wasn't easy to cover because the organization wasn't, because there became incredibly bitter feelings between Hubie, and Jerry, and Hubie's son.
Geoff Calkins (49:25):
Like in the end, Hubie's son worked for the organization, and some of the players hated Hubie 's son. And it became deeply complicated like so many of these things do. But it wasn't hard to cover Hubie when he was in his glory days here.
Todd Jones (49:41):
So, even when it got messy, he still sought you out and said thank you. That's pretty interesting.
Geoff Calkins (49:48):
And when I see him now, he's in just incredibly gracious, great. Yes, everyone remembers here what that moment was like, as fleeting as it was.
Geoff Calkins (50:01):
It's funny how your outside impressions of someone, and maybe this is a lesson, the impressions that you have of someone … this is true of Zach Randolph, this is true of Hubie Brown, and it's true of Jerry West. You know what everyone says and then you interact with them. And if you're fair, and if you're open-hearted and observant, then you learn something else.
Geoff Calkins (50:01):
Jerry West came in here as everyone thought he was the logo, the dignified, regal representative of the NBA practically. And Jerry came in here, and this is all being captured right now in the Winning Time series. Incredibly profane mercurial.
Geoff Calkins (50:48):
Like Jerry, after they traded Jason Williams, at the end of a season. And Jason and I had had a blow up in the locker room.
Todd Jones (51:00):
Yeah, I remember that. "You Ain't going to write nothing, homeboy."
Geoff Calkins (51:03):
Exactly.
Todd Jones (51:04):
That's what he said to you.
Geoff Calkins (51:06):
He said, "You ain't writing nothing, homeboy." And he took my pen. He said, "You ain't getting no interview." But Jerry, I criticized the trade. I said, "Really? You're getting Eddie Jones? Why do we need old Eddie Jones?"
Geoff Calkins (51:20):
Jerry called me, left me a voicemail message. He sounded very dignified in the beginning. He said, "Geoff, Jerry West, I read your column this morning, you fucking asshole. I just want you to know, I wish Jason Williams had beaten the out of you in the locker room." And just on and on and on. F-bomb, f-bomb, f-bomb.
Geoff Calkins (51:40):
And then he'd say, “See you again soon. Goodbye.” The message was he wished Jason Williams had beaten the hell out of me.
Todd Jones (51:49):
So, how did you respond to this?
Geoff Calkins (51:51):
Well, by that point, we knew that was Jerry. Like it's just Jerry, like Jerry was legendary for just ... and that's why when, right now people are ... like when Jerry objected to the Winning Time profile, and I haven't actually seen Winning Time.
Geoff Calkins (52:08):
But what I read is that he comes across off as a lunatic. That is what he came across as in Memphis. Like he's very smart guy. He did draft Kobe Bryant, he did lots of things, and I don't doubt any of that.
Geoff Calkins (52:19):
But emotionally, his struggles that he has with his temper, with his depression, with lashing out, what? Like we saw that all the time. That was Jerry West. And I think anyone probably who's been around Jerry West at any point in a working environment now knows that, certainly people in Memphis did.
Geoff Calkins (52:40):
And we're stunned. We're like, "We thought Hubie was going to be difficult. He was a dream. We thought Jerry was going to be a dream. And man, was that a roller coaster."
Todd Jones (52:49):
I still want to know, how did you respond to a voicemail like that? What, did you call him?
Geoff Calkins (52:56):
I wish I had the voicemail. I probably called him back, or I probably did nothing. I just said, "Well, Jerry's venting." That was not the first time Jerry went off. Like Jerry would go off all the time. That's what he did. The good news is he would tell you what he was thinking.
Geoff Calkins (53:14):
Like Jerry couldn't stand Shane Battier as a player. And he didn't like the fact that the city loved Shane Battier so much. And so, he'd ripped Shane Battier to you off the record.
Geoff Calkins (53:26):
Jerry was an open — like he didn't hide anything. And so, I was a little stunned by the message just because who says, I wish Jason Williams had beaten the hell out of you? But I don't even think I called him back. I thought he was blowing off steam.
Geoff Calkins (53:48):
And the other issue is, the column that I wrote that inspired Jason Williams to go off on me was a bad column and unfair. And so-
Todd Jones (53:57):
In what ways? Why, what was bad about it? Why were you unfair?
Geoff Calkins (54:01):
Because I wrote, he just said some stupid thing like "At the end, even if we lose, I'll still have my family, to go home and love my family." And I ripped him for it. And that's stupid. Like he was just saying this ...
Geoff Calkins (54:15):
At the end, I sort of said, "Then why are people buying tickets? It's fine if you lose." It was a stupid column.
Geoff Calkins (54:24):
And I kind of went in on him for saying just the stupid thing that someone says, the cliche thing. And so, he got fined $25,000 for that outburst, stealing my pen, all of that.
Todd Jones (54:39):
That must have been some pen, by the way.
Geoff Calkins (54:42):
Yeah. A couple years later, after he won a championship in Miami, he came back to the Grizzlies as a free agent just for the end of the year. And it was like, "Oh, what's it going to be like between Jason Williams and Calkins when they get here?”
Todd Jones (54:56):
Cage match.
Geoff Calkins (54:58):
And so, I show up for the availability and I show up with 20 pens in my shirt pocket. And he laughed. And that was that.
Todd Jones (55:09):
Well, good for him and good for you.
Geoff Calkins (55:11):
But I guess, so back to the question is in the end, you learn that what the world thinks of someone isn't necessarily the accurate about what they really are.
Todd Jones (55:25):
Okay. Another basketball figure you butted heads with is John Calipari. University of Memphis for nine seasons from 2000 to 2009. We mentioned the 2008 NCA Championship game lost to Kansas. That was part of three straight Elite Eights. He's a Hall of fame coach. Super successful.
Todd Jones (55:46):
How would you describe your relationship with Calipari during his tenure?
Geoff Calkins (55:51):
John needed an enemy, and I became his enemy. But the truth of the matter is, when I got to Memphis, I would write tough columns, but then I quickly realized this is a different kind of town. You don't need a ripping column every day. It's just not that kind of place.
Geoff Calkins (56:10):
And so, I lobbied for them. I wrote columns saying, "You got to go hire John Calipari."
Geoff Calkins (56:16):
At the end of the first year of covering John, I knew John was unhappy about the coverage. And so, I literally took every column I'd written because he'd say, "Well, I don't read him, but people tell me." So, I literally said, "John, let's sit down at the end of the year."
Geoff Calkins (56:28):
And I brought every column I'd written. I said, "What do you object to here?" And he just kind of waved me off. He's like, "I don't need to look at him. I don't need whatever."
Todd Jones (56:38):
So, you actually brought the columns to him?
Geoff Calkins (56:39):
And this is the day we had to cut out columns. I brought him every column that I wrote about him.
Todd Jones (56:44):
Like a kindergarten project. You're cutting your own columns out.
Geoff Calkins (56:47):
And I said like, "You rip me all the time. What exactly is the gripe?" And he didn't want to engage on that level. He just didn't.
Geoff Calkins (56:57):
John needed enemies. And he called them the miserables. He'd call someone the miserables. It's almost a Trump gift of the way that he would use his enemies and label his enemies. And so, I was like the head miserable.
Geoff Calkins (57:14):
Like here's the only thing I'd write about John. If they lost a basketball game they shouldn't lose, I wouldn't rip him for his strategy. That's not sort of who I was. But he would do things like players would be suspended for one reason or another. They got in a fight, whatever it is. Caught with weed at the time mattered, whatever it was.
Geoff Calkins (57:37):
And then he'd say, "I'm not going to suspend them for the first game of the season. I'm going to suspend them for the first conference game of the season because that matters more to them. Like it's going to really hit them where they hurt."
Geoff Calkins (57:52):
And that was just ridiculous. The first game was against Georgetown or something, and then the conference game was against Tulane, which sucked.
Geoff Calkins (57:59):
So, I'd write a column saying, "This is ridiculous. Like this isn't taking punishment seriously." I would absolutely criticize his very flexible punishments.
Geoff Calkins (58:09):
There was a player he had who was charged with domestic violence. And I wrote columns saying, "You can't possibly play this player. You out of your mind. Like what are you doing?" And those kinds of columns I would write, about his very flexible discipline.
Geoff Calkins (58:30):
But that's really all. Beyond that, they were awesome. They went to three straight Elite Eights. Was that it?
Todd Jones (58:44):
Right.
Geoff Calkins (58:45):
They went to a Final Four. Memphis basketball will never be better than it was under John Calipari. But John really needs to fuel himself with enemies. And so, I think he picked me out as the enemy.
Todd Jones (59:00):
Did you guys ever get along? Did you ever have a stretch where you could have a conversation?
Geoff Calkins (59:07):
Oh, we could have conversations, but not civil ones really. Here's the thing though, for all of that, all of John's practices were open to everybody, including me.
Geoff Calkins (59:22):
And John would have selection Sunday party at his house that I'd go to and I'd cover him there. He had something up for the rebounders the booster club before the season began with all the players available to talk. And I'd go there.
Geoff Calkins (59:39):
Like he absolutely hated me, but he never like tried to hold it against me in terms of covering the team.
Todd Jones (59:47):
He never cut you off.
Geoff Calkins (59:49):
Never. Never stopped talking to me, never didn't answer questions. He would never say my name. Like it was that kind of pettiness. "Well, some guys don't know basketball," and he'd be clearly looking at me and whatever. But he never cut me off. He never tried to punish me in that way.
Geoff Calkins (01:00:07):
The one thing I always did wonder. He had a guy named Smitty who was sort of his right hand man. And Smitty came over one day when John first started not liking me and said, "Hey, Cal and I have a bet. What bar exam did you pass? Was it the Mass bar or the DC bar?"
Geoff Calkins (01:00:33):
And I was kind of confused and I said, "I passed the New York bar because I'm from Buffalo. And you can wave into DC if you pass the New York bar."
Geoff Calkins (01:00:45):
And then it occurred to me, what kind of stupid bet is that? What bar did Geoff? Like if you're sitting around the bar saying, "Hey, Calkins, did he ..." No, they were trying to prove that the reason that I didn't make it as a lawyer or remain a lawyer was that I hadn't passed the bar.
Todd Jones (01:01:02):
Wow. It really got personal.
Geoff Calkins (01:01:04):
A little bit. Like that was the one. But in terms of coverage, it never did. Like in terms of coverage, I was never cut off. That team was an absolute dream to cover. You could be at practice every day. It was unbelievable. And an incredibly colorful group, and we were in the locker room, whatever.
Geoff Calkins (01:01:23):
John was great and he was a great promoter of the team. John is an unbelievably good builder of basketball programs.
Todd Jones (01:01:33):
Since he moved to Kentucky in 2009, where he still remains and has had great success, won a national championship, have you ever had a conversation with him? Do you have any kind of relationship with him now?
Geoff Calkins (01:01:47):
None. No, I have no relationship with John. He came back, there was a regional here and I asked him a question, I don't even remember what it was. And it was the same sort of frosty, but he answered it. It was the same sort of frosty response.
Geoff Calkins (01:02:07):
And the truth of the matter is it's irrelevant. John, he's in the hall of fame. He's great at what he does. But no, we have absolutely no relationship. If I saw Hubie, he'd warmly come over and ask me how I'm doing. If I saw John, he would not even acknowledge my existence. Which is fine.
Todd Jones (01:02:28):
Like we always said, you weren't looking for friends. You were looking for some access and a story.
Geoff Calkins (01:02:33):
And the access was tremendous. Tremendous.
Todd Jones (01:02:35):
So, there you go.
Geoff Calkins (01:02:36):
I trade that every time. And here's the other thing, great copy. Like he was great copy. Great stories, great copy. I mean, towards the end, I wrote a column about just John's verbal style and what a verbal genius he is. And I called professors of rhetoric and whatnot.
Geoff Calkins (01:03:00):
The truth of the matter is I was celebrating John right till the end because there was honestly no reason not to celebrate John and what he had accomplished at the University of Memphis. It is, and I suspect always will be, the golden age of University of Memphis basketball.
Todd Jones (01:03:16):
Well, there was never a dull moment with Calipari, that's for certain. And there was never really a night, quite like the night in Memphis of June 8th, 2002. You mentioned this earlier, and I want to follow up with it.
Todd Jones (01:03:29):
The world championship fight between Mike Tyson and the champ, Lennox Lewis was held at the old pyramid down in Memphis. Usually, fights are in Vegas or New York or some overseas place.
Todd Jones (01:03:44):
It ends up in Memphis. And you're the columnist in town. Boxing Rider always say there's nothing quite like a championship fight the night of a fight.
Todd Jones (01:03:54):
You won an award recently for your 20 year look back on that night. What do you remember about the night and the atmosphere inside that building when Tyson and Lewis squared off?
Geoff Calkins (01:04:08):
What's interesting is that even more than the night to me was the lead up the week. I'll get to the night here in a moment. But the idea that this was happening in Memphis was insane.
Geoff Calkins (01:04:26):
And it was only because Nashville turned it down because Nashville thought it was too pristine a place for such a guy who would bite someone's ear and whatnot.
Geoff Calkins (01:04:38):
And so, the promoter, Brian Young, who was just a really small town promoter at the time, he said, "Well, fine, I'll take it to Memphis." The mayor of Memphis, Willie Herenton was a former Golden Gloves boxer. And so, all of a sudden no one wants this fight. Memphis will take it.
Geoff Calkins (01:04:56):
And like I ended up going to Maui, to Tyson's training camp. I went to the Catskills. It's funny, Lennox Lewis had his training camp in the Catskills. And I stayed at this old like dirty dancing type of hotel there in the Catskills.
Geoff Calkins (01:05:19):
I remember the only room they could get, it was a heart shaped bed with a mirror on the ceiling. Just me and my little heart shaped bed. But so, then the week up to-
Todd Jones (01:05:29):
Wait a minute, did you get any points for staying there?
Geoff Calkins (01:05:32):
The week up to it, you've got this contrast of Lennox Lewis who comes in and is playing chess with the local kids in the local chess clubs and whatever else.
Geoff Calkins (01:05:42):
Tyson gets off the plane, he's got a face tattoo. I don’t know if it was for that fight or the next fight he had the face tattoo. He's got his pigeons with him. At the time, he's being protested because he had said something that was homophobic.
Geoff Calkins (01:06:01):
So, I remember there was one day out at the gym, he was being protested by a local gay rights group. And he comes out of the gym where he'd been practicing and he walks right over to, I think guy was Jim Maynard, I think his name was, and he hugs him.
Geoff Calkins (01:06:19):
And we didn't know if he was going to bite his ear. Like what's going to happen here? The magic of the fight is something, but then everything that comes with that Tyson, like what is going to happen next?
Geoff Calkins (01:06:48):
... he came, at the weigh in, he was overweight. And his trainer said, “Don't worry. One poop and that'll be gone.” Or something like that. He was five pounds overweight. I'm like, "What kind of a trip to the men's room is this going to be for him?"
Geoff Calkins (01:07:06):
But anyway, so it was just wild leading up to it. And then the whole world's media is in town, in Memphis, which is a lot of fun. And then you go to the fight and there's Denzel.
Geoff Calkins (01:07:18):
I talked to Leigh Steinberg was there, the agent. And I know Leigh a little bit just from over the years covering players that he's represented and stuff.
Geoff Calkins (01:07:28):
And I walk up to Leigh Steinberg, I say, "Hello," whatever. And he says, "Hey, Geoff, this is ..." And I didn't quite hear him. He was, "This is so-and-so and this is so-and-so." And I just kind of nod over there.
Geoff Calkins (01:07:39):
And then I realized it was Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio. Those were the two people who he was introducing me to, who were both wearing baseball caps. And I just-
Todd Jones (01:07:50):
Did you ask him to write a sidebar?
Geoff Calkins (01:07:52):
Trying not to. Yeah, right. The truth of the matter is the fight wasn't much of a fight.
Todd Jones (01:07:58):
Yeah. I think Lewis won in the eighth round knockout.
Geoff Calkins (01:07:59):
He dominated him from the start and he could have knocked him out earlier. It was really the fight. That whole era of Tyson as the baddest man on the planet, like indestructible. He can do things that no other fighter can do. It really ended that night in Memphis. And then the subsequent fights were just sort of a sides show.
Todd Jones (01:08:24):
Yeah. His career was pretty much over a year later. Well, those were the kind of events, the kind of nights that, again, when you look back on all those years of covering sports and, like you were mentioning earlier, just getting to travel. I mean, like you said, eight Olympics masters, Super Bowls.
Todd Jones (01:08:44):
When you think about all the things outside of Memphis that you went to, anything in particular stick out about your experiences?
Geoff Calkins (01:09:03):
Yeah. I mean, there's definitely moments when it's pinch me. Like hell, Prince's press conference before the Super Bowl where they planted someone who like … Prince's performance at that Super Bowl is by a claim, the greatest.
Todd Jones (01:09:28):
Oh, Purple Rain in the rain.
Geoff Calkins (01:09:30):
Right. In the rain. Like it was insane.
I was way up in the stadium and I was-
Todd Jones (01:09:52):
Yes. Okay.
Geoff Calkins (01:09:52):
So, I don't know that I even appreciated that as much as people who were watching on TV appreciated that halftime show. But they have a halftime press conference the day before or two days before. And they planted someone to ask a question and then he did a performance.
Geoff Calkins (01:10:12):
It turned into a Prince concert in the press conference, and it was 300 people on a private press conference. He had his twins up there dancing and like that was nuts.
Geoff Calkins (01:10:46):
That's sort of a pinchy moment. The pinchy moments, the other ones that I remember are seeing Cathy Freeman win a gold medal as an aboriginal woman in Australia. Like that's unbelievably great. See Usain Bolt do what he does at Olympics is incredibly great.
Geoff Calkins (01:11:09):
But there's also stories along the way that I don't think anyone else particularly remembers but that I remember. Like at my first Olympics, there was a jumper from Japan named Happy Harada.
Todd Jones (01:11:28):
What a name.
Geoff Calkins (01:11:30):
And the Japanese ski jumping team, that was who was supposed to win all their medals. And the team competition had come along and they did nothing. They were a national disgrace because they hadn't won. And it came down to Happy Harada's last jump. And he was the pride and joy of Japan.
Todd Jones (01:11:52):
Boy, talk about pressure.
Geoff Calkins (01:11:52):
He was the last hope. And it is funny, I don't know nothing about ski jumping. Nothing. I know nothing about ski jumping.
Todd Jones (01:11:59):
I know it's insane. I know that.
Geoff Calkins (01:12:01):
It's part of the pleasure of it. But you get on a bus, and I remember I sat next to Dave Berry going up on the bus to cover this event. And it comes down to the last jump.
Geoff Calkins (01:12:15):
And what happens is there's a little green light that goes off. Okay, now it's time to go. And you see them jump, and then they land, and then immediately you see the scoreboard flash up, you see the digital results right there within three seconds or two seconds.
Geoff Calkins (01:12:31):
Well, Happy Harada lands and there's no result. There's no result. There's no result. There's no result. And it turns out that he had out jumped the measuring equipment, so they had to get out there and manually measure the rest of it.
Todd Jones (01:12:47):
Oh, come on. Like with tape measure?
Geoff Calkins (01:12:50):
And I don't know how ... and then there's the gold medal, like that's fantastic.
Todd Jones (01:12:55):
Now, he's very happy.
Geoff Calkins (01:12:57):
And so, now, he's yes, the happiest of Harada.
Geoff Calkins (01:12:59):
I'll tell you the event that I think was as emotional as I've ever covered is the first gold medal game between the US and the Canadian women's hockey teams.
Geoff Calkins (01:13:08):
They had played each other. Like no one else, no other women really played hockey at that point. It was the US and the Canadian women had probably played each other 50 times leading up to this gold medal game. And they'd probably split 25 times each.
Geoff Calkins (01:13:21):
Like they were the two powers. There had never been Olympic hockey before. They were finally getting a chance.
Geoff Calkins (01:13:28):
The women are incredibly smart, thoughtful. The goalie for the US team went to Dartmouth and was a cellist. And when it's over, it's over, and they're going to go on their careers. There was no women's hockey league.
Geoff Calkins (01:13:48):
And that game, the US won the gold medal. And honestly, as emotional as anything I've ever covered. And the women are incredibly eloquent. That was spectacular.
Geoff Calkins (01:15:41):
Yeah. It was just so much fun. The incredibly long days. I mean, exhausting, the Olympics were. I went once at the Olympics, you do the offbeat stuff. So, Dave Hyde and I went down in Beijing to the market.
There's a market where they have all the exotic food. And there's the centipedes and there's the-
Todd Jones (01:16:06):
Monkey brains and-
Geoff Calkins (01:16:07):
... earthworms and the monkey brains. And there's all this stuff. And we're each thinking what we're going to eat and what we're going to write about for the column. And I settle on that I'm going to eat the sheep penis and write about sheep penis.
Todd Jones (01:16:20):
Oh, come on. Come on.
Geoff Calkins (01:16:21):
And I did. That's what-
Todd Jones (01:16:22):
Wait a minute. You did?
Geoff Calkins (01:16:24):
I did, yeah. I ate the sheep penis. Hyde was like, "My readers can't handle sheep penis. I am going to have the dog." And so, that's what he did. Like whatever, we wrote-
Todd Jones (01:16:36):
Wait a minute, wait a minute. He actually did eat dog?
Geoff Calkins (01:16:39):
We wrote versions of the same column. But in the end said, I settled on the sheep penis.
Geoff Calkins (01:17:06):
Hyde got crushed because his readers could not believe that he had the temerity and the heartlessness to eat dog.
Todd Jones (01:17:15):
Yeah. I mean, he had phyto and fries and I don't think people were going to be happy with that.
Geoff Calkins (01:17:20):
Exactly. How much is that doggy in the window? Exactly.
Todd Jones (01:17:23):
Oh God.
Geoff Calkins (01:17:24):
It's a total disaster of a column for him.
Todd Jones (01:17:27):
Well, I was wondering when you left the world of being an attorney, if just needed a hot dog that bad that you wanted to go be a sportswriter. And now, I find out you ate a sheep penis.
Geoff Calkins (01:17:38):
A sheep penis.
Todd Jones (01:17:38):
And Dave Hyde ate dog, which I'm going to have to ask him about.
Geoff Calkins (01:17:41):
That's exactly right.
Todd Jones (01:17:42):
This is the first time we've had this conversation on this show. So, if anything, it shows you what kind of life it was as a sportswriter all those years, all those travels, all those moments, deadlines, craziness, happy people, upset people.
Todd Jones (01:17:56):
When you think about it though, what a life? I mean, we were so fortunate.
Geoff Calkins (01:18:01):
Well, the thing is, the part that I have liked really the most is being embedded in the community and writing and I don't know, trying to entertain or whatever.
Todd Jones (01:20:26):
I know the folks in Memphis are lucky to have you now, writing general columns as well as hosting your sports radio show.
Todd Jones (01:20:32):
And I thank you so much, Geoff, for sharing the memories here.
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