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PhillipMarshall said...

I'm not sure why, but I've been asked frequently lately about how I came to do what I do. So for those who care, here is my story:

Benny Marshall, my father was the sports editor of the Birmingham News and the most prominent sports writer in Alabama and one of more prominent sport writers in the business. To this day, he was the best I've read. I grew up around college football and college athletics.

As I child, I knew Coach Jordan and I knew Coach Bryant. I had experiences my friends could only dream of, and I loved college football. When I visited Auburn with my father, I came to know friends of his like Hal Herring and Bill Beckwith. They had children my age who became close friends. As a result, I grew up pulling for Auburn. I went to Auburn and Alabama games every fall.

I graduated from Shades Valley High School in Homewood in May of 1968. I was average as dirt as a student, not bad and not particularly good. Having long since realized I would not be the major league player I planned on being when I was 7 and knowing first-hand that the newspaper business did not pay very well, I decided I was going to be a lawyer. I decided, to do that, the University of Alabama was the best place for me to go. Off I went in August of 1968.

I became really ambivalent about the entire Auburn-Alabama thing, a fact that would serve me well in the years ahead. You can't be a fan and be a sports writer, not if you're going to do it the right way.

The main thing I learned over the next year was how to drink beer, which I had never even tasted before the night I graduated from high school. I hated it on graduation night, but soon enough, I didn't hate it. I would have been a lot better off if I had continued to hate it, but that's another story. I was dreadfully immature. By May of 1969, with the Vietnam War raging, I had put myself in position to be eligible for the draft. I decided I would get a job and see how it played out.

Other than having been around the newspaper business my entire life, the extent of my knowledge came from covering a handful of high school games and working as what was called a copy boy in the Birmingham News sports department. But Tom Lankford, a former Birmingham News police reporter, was the editor of the now-defunct Huntsville News. He hired me as a sports writer.

Three days before I was to report for work, my father died. After a week of wondering what to do, I went to Huntsville and to work. I was lonely and unhappy, living on Franklin Street in a room at the home of a little old lady by the name of Sue Richardson. In the next room was David Housel, who I had met when he was an intern at the Birmingham News and was then news editor at The Huntsville News.

My full intention, if I didn't get drafted, was to go back to school, maybe back to Alabama, maybe to Auburn or maybe somewhere else. But things had changed, and if I was going to do it, I was going to have to pay my own way. Fate would lead me in another direction.

I was woefully unprepared and unqualified for the job I had taken, but I knew what good writing was and I knew about sports. Gradually, I began to learn. More than once, I started to give up. I felt immense pressure to live up to my father's legacy and felt totally incapable of doing it. Somewhere along the way, I decided the one thing I could control was how hard I worked at it. And it was that decision, more than any other, that made it possible for me to progress in what would become my life's work.

As it turned out, I wasn't drafted because of a lifelong battle with asthma. I went from The Huntsville News to covering high schools for The Birmingham Post-Herald and back to The Huntsville News as sports editor in a two-man sports department.

In 1974, Bill Lumpkin hired me as assistant sports editor at The Post-Herald, and I will always be grateful. That was the move that gave me an opportunity to do the things I've done, to cover Auburn and Alabama football and basketball, to write columns and express my opinion and to learn about being accountable not only for what I did, but what others did. Really, it wasn't until then that I stopped thinking about returning to school.

It was while I was there that I met Teresa, and we were married on July 1, 1976. Almost 36 years, three children and four grandchildren later, we are still married. That says a lot about her patience.

In 1977, I became sports editor of The Decatur Daily. From 1980 until early 1991, I was sports editor of The Montgomery Advertiser. In 1991, I went to The Huntsville Times as sports managing editor, which was more an office job and management job than a writing job. In 1994, when the Auburn beat job came open, I told my bosses I wanted to write again. I started covering Auburn fulltime and did that until 2008, when I became the senior writer at the first version of what is now AuburnUndercover.com.

It still bothers me at times, even at the age of 62 with almost 43 years in this business, that I don't have a college degree. But I wouldn't swap having watched my son graduate from Auburn summa cum laude in chemical engineering for anything. I wouldn't swap the friends I've made and the things I've seen and done for a degree to hang on my wall.

I still haven't lived up to my father's legacy and never will, but I've accomplished more than I ever could have imagined. When I was voted Alabama Sports Writer of the Year and could hang my plaque beside his, that a very proud moment. Who knows how different my life would have been if I had gone back to school or never left school or if I had been drafted?

So there you have it. That's my story, unremarkable though it is.

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Paratiger2 said...

All I can say Phillip is that I, for one, am glad that your path lead you here.

One question though. Why does Paul Finebaum dislike or rip you anytime someone brings your name up? I don't really listen to his radio show but from what I understand Paul always has a negative response when he hears your name. Did you steal a job from him or fire him or something? Whats his problem? I thought you writers try to stick together.

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kingofhill said...

I was 16 years old in 1969 and had been reading your father for a few years. I started reading the sports page by the time I was 12 or 13. He was a great writer. Birmingham had some very good writers back in the good ole days of the Birmingham News and Birmingham Post Herald. I enjoyed so much reading Benny Marshall, Clyde Bolton and Bill Lumpkin. I would have included VanHoose but I never thought he was as good as the others. Besides, I've always laughed at him for boldly asserting that Jack Nicklaus would never win another golf tournament before he won his 4th US Open, his 5th PGA championship and his 6th Masters. I was an avid sports fan and poured over the sports page every day reading everything from the baseball box scores to the accounts of the Monday night wrestling matches at the Boutwell Auditorium. I really enjoy reading what you write for this website. You do a great job. I would much rather read honest journalism the "company line" any day of the week. Keep it up.

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SHW69 said...

I am around 8 years kingofhill's senior, and obviously have a bit of a different prospective. I too read the B'ham News in the 60s. Van Hoose was (I believe) the Auburn beat writer if it was not Bolton. I can remember that the News seemed to be "totally in love" with Bama, and was hard pressed to give Auburn much of a Break (I thought Alf did more than most). I was in school at AU 63-69 (and graduated with my own AeroEngineering degree. I seem to recall that Benny Marshall was the News' main UofA writter. He seemed to have a very special relation with one Paul Bryant. As I once told Pat Dye, when in his first year at AU and he tended to go on and on about "the Bear", that he might want to loose that (I first said that I would not begrudge a man for his hero's - and Paul Bryant was surely that to Pat) and refer more to what a great guy Shug Jordan was. He did just that and I (for one) really appreciated such. Phillip knows how difficult the 60s were on Auburn fans. I didn't have the full bio on Phillip, and appreciate his writting it out in such detail. I didn't know that he had attended the UofA, but am not supprised, especially with his Dad. I wouldn't accuse the man of being biased against AU, so much as his being enamored with the Tide. No one could deny that Bryant had great charm; I liked him, myself. It had to be a real kick to be around those great Bama teams. But, I have always appreciated Phil's writing style and that he IS AN AUBURN MAN. You can't fake it, for all these years. I have a '74 Law degree from UofA, and that did little to make me convert. I'd have to admit that the '72 Punt Bama Punt game was my best moment (though I appreciate the other school (not the Red Necked Auxillary) more than most on this page). I've watched AU football since '51 and am a total, termainal fan. The reactions of the Red Ones to our 57 and 2010 NCs and to Dye's success was about the same and a totally shameful disgrace, all three times. If AU continues to do well in recruiting - get ready for another dirty shot - that is the way they play the game (just fact I'm afraid). I say thank goodness for Phil Marshall, a good guy and a straight shooter. They trashed him up in Huntsville for covering Auburn in a positve way. They even accused him of being an Auburn Graduate.

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