Before I accepted the job at the Eagle, I spoke with a sports editor at a major, major metro newspaper and asked him what I should do. At the time, I was choosing between the Kansas State beat here and the West Virginia beat at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. As it turns out, the P-G never made the hire and froze the position, but I didn’t know that was going to be the case.
Anyway, I asked the sports editor, and this was his advice:
“Go cover K-State because Bill Snyder is out there, and with all of the junior college kids, there’s bound to be a lot of news to break.”
The punchline is that Bill left but is now back, and in three years in between, the amount of news on the beat was far, far more than I (or the sports editor) could have ever imagined. It was just what I needed, and it was essentially what I set out to accomplish.
Having done so, my work here is complete.