Steve began his journalistic career in an era in which social networking mainly occurred in saloons.
In the years since, he has been a reporter and columnist (Seattle Post-Intelligencer), a magazine founder and editor (The National Sports Review), the Director of Research at ESPN (once had the chore of looking up the history of rain delays in major league baseball), a radio talk show host (fired by KIRO because stupid people need radio stations, too, according to the program director), and the producer of a syndicated sports statistical feature (titled Wow!Stats), distributed by Universal Press Syndicate (quick, name three countries in which athletes are eaten when they fail to perform).
He wrote (with Karen Chave) 100 Years of Husky Football, Who The Hell is Bob? (one of Seattles more remarkable people) and collaborated with Art Thiel (Sports Press Northwest) and Mike Gastineau (KJR-AM) on The Great Book of Seattle Sports Lists, a ribald compendium of Seattle sports exotica that should be made into a movie (Brad Pitt playing Steve).
He gained everlasting infamy in 1985 (at least in Corvallis, Ore.), when, in a column in the Post-Intelligencer, he called the Oregon State Beavers The Barney Fife of College Football, then sat stupefied as the 37-point underdog Beavers cast aside a 28-year slump and beat the Huskies.
As of this writing, that game (which resulted in an official, Oregon State-issued game ball for Steve) still generates 314,000 Google pages, most of them from unenlightened (and presumably salt pillar-licking) OSU fans. Steve has yet to issue an apology on Facebook or Twitter and has no plans to do so.
When I watched the live stream of David Stern’s press conference from Dallas a few days ago, during which the commissioner made clear Seattle would not receive an NBA franchise any time soon, I couldn’t help but think of State Rep. Frank Chopp (D-Seattle), the events of Feb. 24, 2006, and conclude that Stern is still blinded by rage over his humiliation that day.
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Marvel Keith Harshman never enjoyed a home-court advantage in life greater than the overwhelming edge he had Saturday afternoon when a few hundred of his former colleagues, players and fans gathered at, appropriately enough, “Marv Harshman Court” on the University of Washington campus, to bid farewell to a state coaching legend who passed April 12 at 95.
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I began to have a suspicion that the vote by the NBA's relocation committee taken Monday would not go Seattle’s way as far back as March 9 when David Stern tilted the board in Sacramento’s favor by the remarks he made following a Golden State Warriors-Houston Rockets game.
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The National Basketball Association has approved the relocation of nearly two dozen franchises since 1950, including six since David Stern succeeded Larry O'Brien as commissioner in 1984. Due to retire early next year, Stern would have seven relocations on his watch if the NBA hadn't blocked the sale of the Minnesota Timberwolves to New Orleans interests in 1994.
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The Seattle Sports Commission confirmed Wednesday that it will enter into "informal" discussions with the U.S. Olympic Committee about the possibility of the city entering the process of becoming a bid city for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, Sportspress Northwest has learned.
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Although the Seattle Mariners have burst out to a 6-1 Cactus League start after defeating the San Francisco Giants 4-3 Thursday, it's way too early for the sort of gaga reaction encouraged by sports talk radio. Spring training games are, as baseball author Art Hill once observed, exercises written in the sand and have little bearing on what a season holds – as Mariners history emphatically informs us.
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Despite another persuasive argument mounted by the Seattle Mariners on behalf of their former designated hitter, Edgar Martinez, the Baseball Writers Association of America largely rejected the statistical case the club presented, once again barring the Seattle icon from the portals of Cooperstown. In fact, the BWAA did not elect a single player, notably denying Hall entry to Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa.
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Among the more fascinating factoids to come out of the Seahawks' 24-14 victory over the Washington Redskins Sunday is this one: Russell Wilson is the first rookie quarterback in NFL history to win a playoff game after his team trailed by as many as 14 points. The largest previous comeback win engineered by a rookie quarterback occurred Jan. 15, 2000, when Shaun King of Tampa Bay rallied the Buccaneers from a 13-0 deficit to a 14-13 victory over -- unbelievably -- the Washington Redskins.
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Multiple media reports say University of Oregon football coach Chip Kelly, who won the Fiesta Bowl Thursday night over Kansas State, is close to reaching an agreement to become head coach of the Cleveland Browns, ex-Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren’s former team. For fans of the Washington Huskies, this amounts to the single greatest piece of news in more than a decade, better even than the hiring of Steve Sarkisian in 2009, or beating Nebraska in the Holiday Bowl two years ago.
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When the National Football League discloses the identities of the 15 semifinalists for the next round of inductions into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this month, almost certain to be on the list is Seattle native Don Coryell, who found fame in his game only after abandoning his roots.
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Pro Bowl teams will be announced Wednesday on the NFL Network (4 p.m. PT), and three quarterbacks will be selected to represent the NFC. Despite topping the NFL in passer rating since Week 8 (114.26), leading the Seahawks to the playoffs, and becoming one of the favorites for Offensive Rookie of the Year, Russell Wilson is likely to get snubbed and, unfortunately for him, deservedly so.
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It’s difficult to imagine a more remarkable performance -- Pete Carroll described it as “exquisite” – than the one the rookie Russell Wilson delivered Sunday at Soldier Field in Chicago: Drove the Seahawks 94 yards in nine plays for a second-quarter touchdown. Drove the Seahawks 97 yards in 12 plays for the go-ahead TD near the end of regulation. Drove the Seahawks 80 yards in 12 plays for the game-winning touchdown in overtime.
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ColdHardFootballFacts.com is an NFL-specific web site that boasts, “We don’t do feel-good stories here . . . We serve hard facts to men who want to get drunk on the truth.” In a post published a few days after the Seahawks blistered the New York Jets, CHFF argued that in its fixation with Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III, the national media has "largely ignored" Russell Wilson.
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Most of the geeks who grind on NFL statistics have little use for passer ratings, which are calculated by using each quarterback's completion percentage, passing yards, touchdowns and interceptions. Over the past few years, ESPN has developed an alternate statistic called "total quarterback rating," which attempts to assess a quarterback's overall contribution to a team win.
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Rarely does a football coach go off like Washington State’s Mike Leach went off Saturday after the Utah Utes, not exactly a club that wakes the echoes, demolished his Cougars 49-6. Leach said the Utes “could have beat us by 100,” then went Vesuvius on many of his players.
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Along with counterintelligence agents and UFO conspiracy theorists, football coaches rank among the most paranoid people on the planet. They shred game plans, sweep their offices for bugs, look for spies lurking behind trees and the wheel of the team bus, close practices and refuse to talk about injuries.
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Since every pro sports league has rules in place prohibiting its personnel from trashing game officials, Major League Soccer had no recourse but to fine and suspend Sounders coach Sigi Schmid for the comments he made Wednesday that disparaged referee Ricardo Salazar.
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The Washington Huskies start the second half of the season Saturday night at Arizona, a team the Huskies handled last year in Seattle, 42-31. At 3-3, the record is probably what most reasonably expected, and maybe a little more, given that Washington defeated one team nationally ranked Stanford that it didnt figure to beat.
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After spending a good part of the season pleading with the public for patience as a lineup of young hitters developed, the Mariners Thursday predictably made batting coach Chris Chambliss the scapegoat, firing him for presiding over the American League's worst offense (for the third year in a row). Chambliss has to be the first batting coach ever fired one day following a 12-0 victory.
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Seattle's most famous sports streak is over -- kaput. After reigning at the nadir of professional sports for three consecutive years (2008-10), Atlanta out-feebled Seattle as America's Most Miserable Sports City, for 2011, as defined by Forbes magazine, dropping the Emerald City to an unfulfilling No. 2.
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