Ten Best Detroit Sports Columnists of the Past 40 Years
With the passing this week of the legendary Jerry Green, I figured I’d offer up my personal ranking of the Ten Best Detroit Sports Columnists of the past 40 years. You’re free to offer your own ranking below.
A few notes:
- You won’t see Drew Sharp or Michael Rosenberg on the list for obvious reasons.
- This is just a News and Free Press list. If we were to expand it to southeast Michigan, then the likes of Jason Whitlock (Ann Arbor News) and Pat Caputo (Oakland Press) would be in the mix.
- Most of these guys have been on the radio at one point or another, and it’s hard to separate their radio persona from their columnist persona, so I’m trying just to rank them as columnists.
Here we go. My Ten Favorite Detroit Sports Columnists of the past 40 years:
1. Bob Wojnowski, Detroit News. Funny, fair, great writer, Michigan guy, nobody takes better shots at MSU. And he’s been here for decades. The best.
2. Mike Downey, Detroit Free Press. Many of you won’t remember him because he was only here for a few years in the early 1980s, but he was the funniest, most original sports columnist we’ve ever had.
3. John Niyo, Detroit News. Never takes an unfair shot, always an interesting angle. Great writer. Michigan guy.
4. Jerry Green, Detroit News. For longevity if nothing else. Much preferred him to his contemporary, Joe Falls.
5. 1980s Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press. Before he got famous, stopped being funny and started being an asshole, Mitch was great. Now he’s the worst.
6. Shelby Strother, Detroit News. He died in 1991, so many of you won’t remember him, but he was the best pure writer we’ve ever seen in Detroit sports. He wrote some long-form stories that were awesome.
7. Lynn Henning, Detroit News. Nobody better at bringing history to his columns.
8. Terry Foster, Detroit News. Hard to separate his radio career as Valenti’s sidekick, but as a columnist, usually had an interesting take.
9. Hal Schram, Detroit Free Press. He retired in December of 1983, so he just makes my 40-year cutoff. Legendary preps columnist and so much better than the guy who followed him, Mick McCabe.
10. Joe Falls, Detroit News and Free Press. Just because he has to be on the list somewhere.
Green
Falls
O’Hara
Vincent
Puscas
Strother
Kowalski
Downey
Chengalis
Gage
Glad someone thought of George Puscas. He was the best Lions beat writers. I would also add George Cantor as the best Tigers beat writer.
I like this list much better.
Below you can see my objection to Wojo being at the top of the list.
March 25th, 2023 at 11:45 PM ^
Thank you for remembering Killer Kowalski. Great Lions beat writer. Funny as hell. Great on the radio too. Kowalski would have been the one fun thing about the Quinntricia era. He would have just eviscerated those two idiots.
I want to like Henning, although he is a Sparty lover and a shill for the Tigers. He writes a lot about baseball and I like to keep up on the game. But I just don't like his writing style. I have to go back and repeat reading portions of it to understand him. It's like he writes backwards.
I've read hundreds of his columns and I've struggled through many of them. Now that I don't pay for the DetNews subscription I don't miss his columns.
Despite Henning's shilling for MSU, I always enjoy the annual piece he writes about taking a fly-in fishing trip to some remote freshwater lakes in Canada. It usually appears in August. Good content that combines experiencing the beauty of the rugged wilderness with the excitement of reeling in a prized catch.
March 26th, 2023 at 10:57 AM ^
I’m not into fishing or Jimmy Buffet, but one of the best articles I ever read in SI was about fishing, written by Jimmy Buffet. I’m convinced fishing is so boring that it’s the only sport where the writing is more interesting than the doing.
Weird restriction. How many sports columnists have there even been between those two papers in the past 40 years?
Dozens.
Mitch Albom
Mike Downey
Joe Falls
Jerry Green
Not sports but Bob Talbert
Sports commentator former pro Tank McNamara
Mitch Album’s early years were fantastic. I had Freep bias in the 80’s because I delivered a 50 house route for the freep in the 70’s. Some bitter cold mornings, but I always had cash in Jr and Sr HS.
Agree that Mike Downey needs to be up there, and totally agree with your Mitch Albom take.
Downey gets bonus points for marrying Dean Martin's daughter.
Glaring absence of John Lowe in this thread. Tigers beat writer at the Freep forever, an absolute giant.
He also used to stop by the Michigan Daily and give the staff pointers. I don't know if he ever got any recognition for that. Really good guy.
I took a class with John U. Bacon and because it was the baseball offseason (IIRC), John Lowe came in to guest lecture. He came to office hours to hang out, too, and I think more than once. The nicest, most humble and unassuming guy, and had the best stories.
If you can find it, his game story on Verlander's first no-hitter, where he mused whether a short-term bird infestation at Comerica played a pivotal role (which seems plausible), is an all-timer.
I was in high school and had only been reading the Free Press for a year or two when he left, but yeah, Downey was awesome. First thing I thought when I saw this post.
Let's also acknowledge that, while access to results, data, and statistics is much greater now than it was then, the fun of reading the morning paper is nowhere near what it once was. And while I can recognize the "life was better then" trope so common to people my age ... that doesn't mean it's not accurate.
I miss the ritual of the morning paper, back in the 70s, 80s, and even much of the 90s.
The ritual of the morning paper:
One of my favorite parts of a Michigan football weekend was reading about a win the day after.
I endorse this message. I subscribed to the paper version of The Wolverine in the 90's. It was great until Michigan actually lost two games in a row and if you paid for 2nd class mail you could read about the 1st loss just after the 2nd loss. So naturally, I upped to 1st class mail.
When I was a kid, we had three Detroit papers delivered to the house. The Sunday editions recapping Saturday football were outstanding, the pictorials beyond anything today. My father had me reading before I started school because he let me have the sports sections before him. Yes, life was better is an accurate assessment.
I also learned to read on the sports pages before I started kindergarten, because I was a tiny big sports fan. Also, very competitive, because my older brother was learning to read in first grade.
Nothing quite like newsprint on your fingers with morning coffee.
This part of the olden days in on the mark.
Got to put Angelique on the list. I enjoy her writing.
Wojo's writing style is so damn old and stale now. Almost cringeworthy when he tries to create nonexistent drama in his column, using the same ol schtick...
The last few years of Joe Falls was absolutely horrible - all he did was complain how hard the seats were at the game.
Agree on the 1980's Albom - was great until he he me Morrie on Monday (or was it Thursday) and got so damn full of himself.
Met George Puscas as a kid - great guy and damn good writer.
Agree that overall, Wojo's stuff is not as fresh as it once was, but his football picks column in the fall is still pretty funny.
There's also the fact that in the mid-90s during the Wild West era of Detroit sports talk radio, Stoney and Wojo was some of the best listening you could find on the radio. He's not what he once was, but Wojo entered the stratosphere more or less every weeknight for like a decade on top of his columns.
Surprised and pleased so many are mentioning George Puscas—I thought he was great because of his straight, factual reporting that wasn’t full of provocative, egotistical “hot takes.”
I like Wojo but I believe your comment is on point.
Albom's best column was about driving from Toronto to Detroit with Jacque Demers after they both missed the plane back to Detroit. Very warm and human, unlike most of his writing.
Puscas was enjoyable.
I thought Hal Schram was special for staying with high school sports. His filled the role with legendary enthusiasm.
Joe Falls had diabetes really bad and had peripheral neuropathy as a result. He probably should have been home in a recliner with the remote nearby.
March 25th, 2023 at 11:01 PM ^
I remember when he got the shingles really bad too.
March 25th, 2023 at 11:37 PM ^
I remember when Falls was busted for soliciting.
Joe Falls is my favorite sportswriter of all time. But I'm 64 and don't count. And I've lived in Alabama for forty years, so I've dealt with Finebaum for most of my life. Green second. Albom third best sports columnist, best writer.
Finebaum for 40 years? My condolences.
(Were you really mean to someone in a previous life and this is karma kicking you in the butt?)
Wojo at the top?
You may be right about his writing but his tapings with Chengelis are really bad, close to creepy. About the only thing that redeems the tapings is Chengelis doing what workers know is part of a bad workplace, defer to the boss and laugh at his bad jokes.
Now HER on the list would make sense.
Downey was the best columnist.
John Lowe, Shelby Strother, Killer Kowalski, Cynthia Lambert, and Keith Gave were the best beat writers.
Puscas was the best senior writer.
As others have mentioned, there was a time when Albom was a really good sportswriter. But his ego eventually got the best of him.
I was always partial to Iffy the Dopester too.
I'll second Keith Gave as well, really great writer.
Iffy the Dopester! I only regret that I have but one upvote to give to that reference.
Too bad The Detroit Times is beyond the 40-year limit although Joe Falls wrote for them. I would add Vartan Kupelian, Jack Berry and Pete Waldmeir to the list. Glad someone recognized George Cantor.
A Michigan grad once told me back in the '80s, "There is something special about a cup of coffee, a cigarette, and THE SPORTS PAGE!
The smell of ink - nothing like it.
It's been a long time, but I remember loving Mike Downey. I also agree with the comments below about early Albom being great.
Caputo 👎
The best sports writing I've read from a columnist was John U. Bacon when he was with the Detroit News years ago.
I had no idea Jason Whitlock used to write for the Ann Arbor News. What a shitbird that guy has become
lol, whitlock. the pits of the earth.
joe falls was never anything but a hack.
and mccabe absolutely belongs on the list.
March 26th, 2023 at 12:17 AM ^
I always enjoyed Mick McCabe's "Best of the Midwest". I was curious how Michigan stacked up in HS recruiting way back in the day when seemingly nobody in the public seemed to care all that much. Nowadays recruiting is pretty much national news.
always read Mitch Albom's column before school in the late 80's, early 90's
It's kind of sad how great Mitch used to be before he turned into a wishy-washy Hallmark film of a writer. The Live Albom books are just packed with incredible writing.
March 25th, 2023 at 11:05 PM ^
Honorable mention to Tom Gage. He wasn't as expressive or naturally gifted as Lowe, but he churned out a ton of very reliable work.