Colleague talks about Mariotti resignation


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Posted by chicagomedia.org on August 28, 2008 at 10:55:46:

In Reply to: Jay Mariotti quits Sun-Times posted by chicagomedia.org on August 27, 2008 at 07:21:57:

Telander: So long, Mariotti

Colleague, rival weighs in on columnist's departure

"If he's gone, I don't even know how to describe it," Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Rick Telander said Wednesday of colleague Jay Mariotti's resignation from the paper this week. "I am reborn."

Telander, who has been at the Sun-Times for 13 years, and Mariotti, who left after 17, rarely saw eye-to-eye, including what they saw their respective jobs as and how they should do them. A former college football star at Northwestern University, Telander sees nothing but addition through subtraction for Team Sun-Times.

"Let's unify. There was no unity with him," Telander said. "As sports writers, we study and analyze teams all the time. We look at chemistry, teamwork, coaching and discipline like all of that has nothing to do with any other business, and yet that's the blueprint for success anywhere and in any business. So in these stormy seas, let's give it a try. We can't hate each other and hide. It's a team, isn't it?

"I've been on teams," he said. "I've seen when teams are far greater than the sum of the parts, and when that happens, it's a magnificent thing. You see the White Sox in 2005. You see the Beatles. None of those pieces ever equal the whole. Let's give it a shot."

Mariotti said again Wednesday that the final straw for him was the state of the Sun-Times' Web site, even though he had started a column before quitting Tuesday--but never filed--for Wednesday's paper on Sen. Barack Obama's comments to ESPN about White Sox fans versus Cubs fans. Telander, who has first pick for topics in Wednesday's Sun-Times, wound up writing on the same subject.

Whatever precipitated Mariotti's resignation, or the Sun-Times' decision to accept it, Telander sounded energized. "This is exciting," he said. "Let's go with our bandoleros on and our guns blazing. Let's do Butch and Sundance coming into the square."

When it was pointed out that in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" the two bank robbers on the lam in Bolivia dash headlong into a veritable shooting gallery and die in a hailstorm of bullets, Telander was undeterred.

"Maybe this time we'll kill them all," he said.


(Phil Rosenthal)


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