No Regrets, No Parting Advice, Just Goodbye

This is probably somewhere near the 200th byline in the Spectator. It is also probably my last. That’s a lot of stories, a lot of games, and too many obituaries. But I have dreaded this column since I saw my first round of farewell columns in April of my freshman year.

In the four years I have been covering Columbia sports, I have been to every Ivy League campus and some random ones in Pennsylvania to write about games. It feels like I should have perspective now. I would like to share some insight into Columbia athletics beyond the fact that it’s a good thing we learn about fate in the first month of LitHum because Columbia’s losing history rivals Troy’s.

But you don’t need to have been around the Columbia program for long to understand that Columbia loses. That’s what it does, and that’s what it’s famous for.

To sum up my time at the Spectator is even simpler. I am a sportswriter. Sportswriters tell stories. That’s what we do.

There are lots of different types of stories, though. I sometimes told people when I was Editor-in-Chief of this publication that there were two types of stories, the ones we put in the paper and the ones we tell around the office. It was my lame attempt to get people to do what I think is the key to reporting; to show up.

In four years I have amassed a database of both types of story. I did this just because I like to hang around.

My first column was a fill-in job because the usual tenant of the space, Brian Malmon, had gone on leave. It was 400 words about Randy Moss that didn’t jump off the back page.

I was told to write the column at 10:00 because the person who was supposed to sub for Malmon crapped out and I was in the office training to be Associate Sports Editor. I was there, and there was a hole on the back page.

I have spent four years on this newspaper telling stories.

Wisdom? I have no wisdom, no advantage of years. I just showed up. I saw what there was to see and listened to what there was to hear. If you read my stories, hopefully I told you most of what I knew. Hopefully I wrote something that you wanted to read and you put the newspaper down afterward and said to yourself, “Great story.”

This is a last column and last columns often contain advice.

I don’t have advice for anyone. I’m not going to make pronouncements about the way things are at Columbia or should be. I have seen things I never thought I would and written a lot about them. I am very glad that I have a written record of my short time here. I can see in my columns the way my opinions and rhetoric have changed. I can see in my game stories the way my approach to telling stories has changed during the last four years.

I can only tell you stories about me. I see the Spectator and I don’t think newspaper worked to cover this. I think of good soup and pizza I’ve eaten in press boxes. I remember blustery days in open-air press boxes holding onto styrofoam soup bowls above terrorized fans. I think of jokes and word games told during travel.

I look at these long pages of newsprint and remember the way we made them. The people we met, the beer we drank, the websites we stumbled on to while finding stories for the newspaper.

For me, Columbia and the Spectator will always be closely related. And for me, Spectator is about the details. I think it’s like that for everyone; we all have our own stories, our own details.

Long sappy good-byes aren’t my thing. I’m going to stop now, because I’ve said my piece. For those who have read my column over the semesters, thanks for reading.

For the last time, this is The Motown Sound, signing off.