Detroit Free Press

Iremember the first moment I felt like a journalist. I was 22, and it was just before classes started at Columbia ...

IGREW an inch in college. That's not much. But it's still a change. It shows I wasn't a finished product when I arrived on campus -- not physically and certainly not emotionally.I remember that inch every year at this time, when newspapers -- including this one -- print the national "rankings" of college football recruiting classes.From top to bottom they are listed, celebrated, analyzed and re-analyzed. Who signed whom? Which school got the hottest studs? Who did the best shopping at the teenage supermarket?

This Tuesday, "Good Morning America" will offer you something different with your coffee. You can watch a baby ...

They read off the names of the dead. There were prayers and tears and scribbled notes for "10 special angels." The governor called them all "champions." Heads shook in disbelief. Trembling lips were bitten.It was a memorial service Wednesday for the 10 members of the Oklahoma State basketball program who died last weekend when their small plane crashed in a snowy Colorado field.All involved were too young. The victims, the families, the crying students who packed the Stillwater gym Wednesday.

TAMPA-- By the time it was over -- and it was over way before it was over -- the kid was useless. He couldn't hit ...

So there we were, sitting at this news conference, listening to the new football coach the Detroit Lions had hired, and he was saying some funny things and we were laughing and at one point I turned to a friend of mine and casually whispered, "How old is this guy?""Thirty-eight," my friend said."Thirty-eight?"I stopped laughing.

Good news, Curt. This year, in deference to the grueling presidential election we just endured, I will not engage in the politics of personal destruction -- even though you personally have been referred to as a Swinging Chad.No, sir. I will not tell people that your Super Bowl predictions are normally as reliable as airport soup.Or that your idea of research during Super Bowl week is seeing just how carefully that "six-foot" rule is enforced in Tampa.

LET'S SEE. The Lions now have a CEO who never ran anything before, and a head coach who never head-coached before. ...