Tag Archives: FWAA

Photo Gallery: FWAA Awards Breakfast

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The entrance to the 2014 FWAA Annual Awards Breakfast at the Newport Marriott Hotel & Spa. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
A table setting from the 2014 FWAA Annual Awards Breakfast on Jan. 6 at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel & Spa. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
(Left to right) Dick Weiss, FWAA Past President and 2013 Bert McGrane Award winner, Dave Hirsch, Pac-12 Vice President Communications, and Malcolm Moran, FWAA Board Member, enjoyed a few moments of conversation before the breakfast. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
Auburn Sports Information Director Shelly Poe and new CoSIDA Executive Director Doug Vance chatted before the beginning of the FWAA’s Annual Award Breakfast in Newport Beach, California. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
Tim Tessalone, USC Sports Information Director and 2014 Bert McGrane Award winner (standing), spoke with Art Spander, long-time writer who won the FWAA’s Lifetime Achievement Award for covering his 61st straight Rose Bowl. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
Jon Wilner, San Jose Mercury News sports writer, interacted with his daughter Anna before receiving the FWAA’s 2013 Beat Writer of the Year Award at the 2014 FWAA Annual Awards Breakfast. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
The 2013 Campbell Trophy winner, John Urschel of Penn State, attended the FWAA’s Annual Awards Breakfast. The Campbell Trophy honors the top academic football player in the country and is awarded by the National Football Foundation. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
Chris Dufresne of the Los Angeles Times, the 2013 FWAA President, presided over the FWAA Annual Awards Breakfast. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
Keri Potts, ESPN Director of Communications for College Sports, made a presentation and showed a video during the FWAA Annual Awards Breakfast. ESPN is the sponsor of the breakfast. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
Art Spander accepted the FWAA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He earlier was honored in the Rose Bowl Press Box. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
FWAA President Chris Dufresne presented Art Spander a customized football for his historic achievement. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
Art Spander and several family members at the 2014 FWAA Annual Awards Breakfast. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
Jon Wilner, with the acrobatic help of his daughter Anna, accepted the FWAA’s Beat Writer of the Year Award. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
USC’s Tim Tessalone, one of the top SIDs in the business, made a point during his acceptance of the 2014 Bert McGrane plaque. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
Bill Hancock, Executive Director of the new College Football Playoff, explained the new format starting with the 2014 season. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
Part of the crowd at the 2014 FWAA Annual Awards Breakfast. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
Mark Anderson, sports writer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and 2014 FWAA second vice president, announced the 2013 FWAA Freshman All-America Team. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
Ivan Maisel, FWAA Past President, (left) accepted an FWAA Best Writing Award Certificate from FWAA Board member Malcolm Moran. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
Dennis Dodd, another FWAA Past President, (left) received an FWAA Best Writing Award Certificate from FWAA Board member Malcolm Moran. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
The 2013 FWAA President Chris Dufresne (left) handed over the FWAA presidency to Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
Incoming 2014 President Kirk Bohls explained his agenda for the coming year near the end of the Awards Breakfast. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)
After the breakfast, Jon Wilner signed one of two appreciation posters the FWAA gave to Gina Lehe and Stephanie Montano of the Rose Bowl in appreciation for their service to the media during the Rose Bowl and the Bowl Championship Series title game. (Photo courtesy of Rose Bowl)

New president Kirk Bohl’s column

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2014 FWAA President Kirk Bohls

2014 FWAA President Kirk Bohls

INDIANAPOLIS — It’s the dawning of a new day for college football. I hope I don’t oversleep.

I wouldn’t want to miss it. By this time next year when we’ve celebrated our first champion from a real, live playoff culminating in Arlington, Texas, we might not even recognize the game. Change is coming, and, yes, it will be dramatic.

We enter 2014 with an appreciation for the rich past of this wonderful game we follow and an eye toward a future filled with equal parts anticipation of a historic season with the first College Football Playoff after the 2014 regular season. We also have a healthy concern for the direction of the sport. After all, the game is in a state of flux. Who knows when the Southeastern Conference will end its long drought and ever win another championship?

First, it’s a privilege to be your 2014 FWAA President. And I’d like to especially salute our 2013 President, Chris Dufresne, for his terrific service. I’d like to thank him for the great California weather for the final BCS game and the fact the game did not go into overtime

These are tumultuous times as college football wrestles with overwhelming issues: potential federation within the NCAA that could lead to a separate division and more distance between the haves and have-somes; Football Bowl Subdivision anxiety over uneven enforcement of penalties; players’ long-term health and safety; subsidies for players for the full cost of a scholarship; a tangled, complicated rulebook; and the controversial Ed O’Bannon lawsuit over payment for use of players’ likenesses for video games. And that doesn’t even count Lane Kiffin’s fascinating future, especially the week of the Alabama-Tennessee game.

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A fireside chat with your 2014 president, Kirk Bohls

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2014 FWAA President Kirk Bohls

2014 FWAA President Kirk Bohls

(Ed. Note:  Executive Director Steve Richardson recently asked Kirk Bohls several questions about his life and a couple of topics so we could get to know him better.)

ATHLETIC BACKGROUND:  “I am a Taylor Duck (High School is 29 miles northeast of Austin) once and forever. I played every sport they had at Taylor, including football where I played Monster Man (strong safety) and was a 150-pound terror — at least in my mind. I also broke my neck in the first half of our homecoming game against Rockdale (we won) and played the entire second half. You can’t get much more stupid than that.”

WORK HISTORY:  “It can be summed up pretty simply. I graduated from the University of Texas in May 1973, went to work for the Austin American-Statesman that same month after coming within an hour of taking a job in Lubbock at the Avalanche Journal. I have been there ever since. My first year on the Texas beat was Darrell Royal’s last year. We broke the OU spying story the week of the 1976 OU game, and that’s still the most memorable Texas-OU game ever. My first year on the Texas baseball beat was 1977. Texas won the national championship. I’m thinking these beats are kind of cool. I think I’ll stick around. Some 40 years later…”

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AFCA convention offers alternative view on concussions

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Dennis Dodd

Dennis Dodd

By Dennis Dodd/CBSSports.com

INDIANAPOLIS — College football coaches’ answer to the concussion crisis is a former University of Texas cheerleader who believes brains can heal themselves.

Hey, why not? Not much else has seemed to soothe the nation’s fears. The concussion crisis has resulted in a public relations crisis. The numbers of those playing youth football are dwindling. Lawsuits are hitting the NCAA, NFL — even the national high school association — from all sides.

The American Football Coaches Association on Monday morning presented Dr. Sandra Chapman as a rebuttal in an ongoing debate that continues to erode the profession’s credibility.

“If you haven’t sensed it,” AFCA executive director Grant Teaff told an audience of about 500 coaches, “our game’s under attack.”

Chapman, then, was part of the counterattack. The founder and chief director of the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas-Dallas, is a cognitive neuroscientist. Her suggestion to Monday’s group was things aren’t as bad as the national narrative suggests.

“I want to change the conversation that you’re hearing,” she said during a session titled: The Future of Football: A Dose of Reality. “We’re showing a [positive] brain change [after injury], not in months and years but in literally hours.”

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Volney Meece Scholarship goes to Oklahoma youth

by • Annual Meeting, Awards, Awards Breakfast, Member News, Volney Meece Scholarsip • Tags: ,

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Sarah Helsley, a senior at Edmond Santa Fe High School in Edmond, Okla., was named as the 17th winner of the Volney Meece Scholarship.

The scholarship is awarded annually by the Football Writers Association of America and named for the late Volney Meece. Meece served 22 years as the FWAA’s executive director and was the organization’s president in 1971. The announcement came at the FWAA’s annual awards breakfast.

The scholarship is a $1,000 annual grant for four years. It is awarded to a deserving son or daughter of an FWAA member.

The 17-year-old Helsley is the daughter of long-time FWAA member John Helsley of The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City.

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Congratulations to the ‘Magnificent Seven’ 1

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The only seven writers who have covered all 16 BCS championship games.

The only seven writers who have covered all 16 BCS championship games.

Only seven writers — all of them FWAA presidents past or present — have covered all 16 BCS championship games. The group gathered for this photo on the field at the Rose Bowl early Monday evening before the title game between Florida State and Auburn. They are, left to right, Tony Barnhart, Ivan Maisel, current president Chris Dufresne, Dick Weiss, Dennis Dodd, Mark Blaudschun and Blair Kerkhoff.

San Jose State’s Larceval receives FWAA Courage Award

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Courage Award 2013

San Jose State’s Anthony Larceval (left), the 2013 winner of the FWAA’s Courage Award, joins 2012 Courage Award winner Daniel Rodriguez of Clemson after the award presentation at the Orange Bowl Coaches Luncheon on Jan. 2 in Miami. Photo by Ken Ruinard of the Anderson (S.C.) Mail Call.

From the San Jose Mercury News

MIAMI — Anthony Larceval is shaking a lot of hands, meeting a lot of people and his whereabouts are being constantly monitored by chauffeurs.

And the now former San Jose State defensive lineman is enjoying all of it.

“It’s been great,’ said Larceval, who on Thursday was formally awarded the Football Writers Association of America Courage Award at a luncheon previewing Friday’s Orange Bowl between Clemson and Ohio State.

“After going through such a tough year — probably the toughest of my young life — it’s been great,” he said. “It’s been awkward to be rewarded and recognized like this for such adversity, but I’ll take it.”

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USC’s Tessalone named winner of Bert McGrane Award

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USC Sports Information Director Tim Tessalone

USC Sports Information Director Tim Tessalone

USC’s Tim Tessalone is the 41st winner of the Bert McGrane Award, which is annually bestowed on a member of the Football Writers Association of America.

He has served college football for more than three decades as the Trojans’ sports information director, helping writers in their jobs as well as promoting the school’s athletic teams — both in exemplary fashion.

The McGrane Award, symbolic of the association’s Hall of Fame, is presented to an FWAA member who has performed great service to the organization or the writing profession. It is named after McGrane, a Des Moines, Iowa, writer who was the executive secretary of the FWAA from the early 1940s until 1973.

The Bert McGrane Award

The Bert McGrane Award

Tessalone will receive the award during the FWAA’s Annual Awards Breakfast on Jan. 6 at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Spa, the media hotel for the VIZIO BCS National Championship game, played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

“I am humbled and honored to receive an award that not only is named after a man who served the FWAA so well, but that has been presented previously to icons who are well above me in stature and ability,” Tessalone said. “It is a privilege to be in their company.  Thank you to the FWAA membership, with particular gratitude to Chris Dufresne (2013 FWAA President) and Mark Blaudschun (1999 FWAA President).

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President’s column, by Chris Dufresne

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Like a Capistrano swallow, Art Spander always finds his way to the Rose Bowl

FWAA President Chris Dufresne

FWAA President Chris Dufresne

Art Spander failed to attend the first Rose Bowl in 1902 only because, as the story goes, he hit the snooze alarm (a rooster) and missed the 7 a.m. stagecoach to Pasadena.

Or maybe that story is apocryphal.

This one is not: Spander will ring in 2014 by attending his 61st straight Rose Bowl…out of a 100.

Consider that, astonishingly, for a second.

People make a big deal about Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak of 56-straight games. Shoot, that streak only spanned ONE season.

 Spander has attended 60% of all Rose Bowl games played. His career attendance percentage is higher than Shaquille O’Neal’s career free-throw percentage (52.7%).

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