In 1993, three weeks after graduating from Indiana University, I moved to Manhattan. My dad flew out with me from Chicago and, as he finished moving me into a sublet apartment, he handed me a bartending manual, and then passed along this bit of wishful thinking: “I hope you don’t need it.” Three weeks later, as I was about to crack the book open, I got a call from Sports Illustrated. Over the next five years, as an SI reporter and then a correspondent at CNNSI, I was run over by Dorsey Levens while covering Super Bowl XXXI from the sidelines, watched a woman take on the men on the pro rodeo circuit and accidentally wandered into the aftermath of the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics.
I was hired as an associate editor by ESPN The Magazine days before its second issue was published in April of 1998. Except for an ill-advised, one-year absence to chase dot-com gold, I’ve been with The Mag ever since, as a contributor and now as a senior deputy editor. I’ve co-authored the books Pickup Artists: Street Basketball in America with Lars Anderson, the New York Times Bestseller Iceman: My Fighting Life with Chuck Liddell and Invincible: My Journey from NFL Fan to NFL Captain with Vince Papale, whose life story is the basis for the movie Invincible, which starred Mark Wahlberg. I also wrote The Odds: One Season, Three Gamblers and the Death of Their Las Vegas as well as The Detonators: The Secret Plot to Destroy America and An Epic Hunt for Justice.
I live in Montclair, New Jersey with my wife Stacy, an architect, and our sons Zachary and Owen.