Focus on Kirk McNair – Revisited!

While at Maryville I worked part time at the Maryville-Alcoa Daily Times (now the Maryville Times, I believe) and when I enrolled at the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Birmingham, I was able to work nights for the Birmingham Post-Herald, which needed me in their sports department. In 1969 I was named assistant sports editor, covering Alabama and Auburn. In 1970 I went to the University of Alabama as assistant sports information director and in 1974 was named sports information director, covering Alabama football (and to great extent that meant covering Coach Paul Bryant) and men’s basketball. In 1979 I began ‘BAMA Magazine which later included the web site, BamaMag.com. I sold that in 2004 and signed a long term contract with Fox Sports to continue both. In 2016 they were acquired by CBS and 24/7 sports, for whom I am now a columnist and reporter continuing coverage of Alabama football and men’s basketball.

Although I still have a downtown office to which I go perhaps three days per week, I do most of my work from home and, of course, covering press conferences at the University of Alabama and football and basketball games. In the off-season I do many research projects.

Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of football at Alabama and I did a five-part series on Paul Bryant’s efforts at desegregation beginning at Kentucky in the late 1940s, at Texas A&M in the 1950s, and finally and successfully at Alabama. The series was awarded the Alabama Sports Writers Association award for best enterprise feature. After helping found the ASWA in 1972, I was selected to the ASWA Hall of Fame (14th inductee) in 2012 and last year was named a 50-year medalist of the organization.

Seeing my daughter graduated from Vanderbilt, and my son, daughter-in-law, and grandson all graduated from Texas A&M. Two grandchildren to go, a granddaughter at LSU and a grandson at the Webb School in Tennessee.

Although I may not have realized it at the time, it probably was time management, but I think a liberal arts education was helpful in my vocation as a writer and, more important perhaps, in appreciation of many things not associated with sports reporting.

Because we live on a lake, most of my leisure time is spent with my wife either in or on the water with frequent cocktail cruises in the evenings. My longtime golf hobby is now mostly hitting balls off a mat on my pier.

…am still alive, still working, and have published two books (and now turn down all requests to do any more).

Maryville attracted high quality students and teachers who were a pleasure to be around. I still draw on memories from things I learned from Arthur Ainsworth, Vladimir Friedenberg, and David Hoch.

I think about Maryville often and the progress since I was there makes me very proud of my alma mater.