There's an old line that goes like this: An optimist is usually happy. And a pessimist is usually right. Maybe so. But which would you rather be, anyway?

I always say that, to me, it starts with reading. This is something I tell high school kids, college kids, people trying to get into the business, that it's just so much about reading. Read, read, read. So much of everything else falls into place when you just do a ton of reading.

When you live around a working-class environment, you see what sports means to people. You see that it's the escape over the weekend. you see how they build their lives around it. People sort of want to get away from their lives.

Joe Paterno was a well-educated man, and he was also a man from a different time.

Being wrong on facts, that's something you have a real responsibility to correct. But being wrong in the fun sports way is part of the interplay.

How good is Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel anyway? ... to me, Daniel's brilliance has nothing to do with the big numbers he puts up more or less every week. Howie Long once gave a great explanation of what it was like to get beat by quarterback legend Joe Montana. He said it was like getting knocked out in a pillow fight. You never felt the blow. And you were all kinds of mad afterward. That's as good as any description of Daniel. ... So what does Daniel do? Something right. On every play. In chess, grandmasters will tell you that it's the most innocuous-looking moves that are deadliest.

I never argue with people who say baseball is boring, because baseball is boring. And then, suddenly, it isn't. And that's what makes it great.