Shooting With The Lip: Lupica Sits For Extensive Chat With Blog

Lupica Says The Daily News Is "Hanging In There"

N.Y. Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica sat for an extensive interview with COLLEGE HOOPS JOURNAL's Matt Norlander, who wrote of the nearly 90-minute exchange, "It’s unlikely he’ll be affording anyone else this kind of interview any time soon." Lupica said of balancing his role as both a sports and political columnist with writing books and appearing regularly on ESPN's "The Sports Reporters," "I can't sit through as many four-hour baseball games anymore, but the paper knows if something happens, they can have a column in an hour." Despite many long-time columnists in major markets taking buyouts in recent years, Lupica said, "Nobody's asked me to leave." Lupica: "Maybe someday they will, but they still seem happy to have me write in both parts of the paper." He said the Daily News is "hanging in there" amid the rough time for newspapers, and added, "The subway is probably what's kept it alive." Lupica called the Boston Globe's Bob Ryan the "quintessential" sports columnist, and added, "Dan Shaughnessy is great. Mike Wilbon is great. I think Mitch (Albom) is still great. ... Danny Le Batard isn't writing many columns now, but I think he's really good." Meanwhile, he said "The Sports Reporters" has been an "incredibly delightful, fun, stunning sidebar. ... It's the most fun job in television." Lupica, who lives in Connecticut, said of taping the show in N.Y., "Usually, by Thursday, we know the segments and decide parting shots. I leave (my house) at 6 o’clock on Sunday, I’m there by 7 o’clock. We start taping at 7:30, and I’m back in the car coming back to New Canaan by 8:15."

CYBER STALKING: Lupica has become a favorite target for many Web sites and blogs in recent years, and when asked why "the Internet hates" him, Lupica said, "I don’t look at the Internet. It’s not true. It’s like punching at shadows. I’ve never gotten anybody fired. I think there’s a small group of people really obsessed with me in this odd way." He noted prior to the arrival of the Internet, writers such as Dick Young "pounded away at me." Lupica: "Pete Hamill said to me once, when he was talking to a friend, 'I picked up a paper today and read story about the most horrible person and it turned out to be me.' I don’t need to have myself defined by other people. My editors know who I am, my friends, my family certainly know who I am" (COLLEGEHOOPSJOURNAL.com, 4/9).

RICK ROLLED: ESPN's Rick Reilly recently appeared on ESPN's Bill Simmons' podcast, and when asked how he likes making TV appearances on the net, Reilly said, "I don't know what I'm doing." Reilly: "I kind of like it because you reach such a lot more people. I kind of hate it because people come up to you and say when it was writing, ‘Your column moved me. We buried it with grandma.’ … The words mean something to them in writing. In TV, it’s always just like, ‘Hey, I saw you on TV.’” Meanwhile, on the heels of Simmons' podcast with ESPN Senior VP & Exec Editor John Walsh last month in which Simmons expressed a desire to be critical of the net at times, Reilly said, "We should be able to take little shots (and) be critical, like the ombudsman does. That’s the only person who gets to do it.” Simmons: "People like you and I … are supposed to be the detached arbiters of the sports scene, but yet ESPN is such this mammoth part of the sports scene, that’s the part I don’t get it.” Reilly: “To their credit, I ripped the bejesus out of the BCS and they had just signed this massive deal with the BCS … and nobody called me” ("The BS Report," ESPN.com, 4/7).