Tom Shatel
By Steve Richardson
MIAMI (FWAA) -- Longtime FWAA member and 2000 FWAA President Tom Shatel was named the FWAA's 2026 Bert McGrane winner earlier this year and will be honored at a private dinner here Friday night hosted by the National Football Foundation and presented by the More Family. The event kicks off festivities leading up to the College Football Playoff National Championship Game on Monday night.
It's an appropriate place for Shatel to get the award because he has covered 19 Orange Bowl games. And there's a team Shatel is quite familiar with playing for the title on Monday night: the Miami Hurricanes.
"I love college football," Shatel said. "I love the press box. My heroes were always high above the action, in the press box. Their impact is undeniable. The game has always grown through their eyes, their perspectives. I have always felt a sense of honor and duty there. Members of the Football Writers Association of America are Stewards of the game. Guardians. Whenever I walk into a pressbox, I try to uphold the standard left by those before me.
"Now, to find myself alongside them, is surreal," Shatel added. "This the greatest thing that's happened in my career. I'm humbled, honored, grateful. You better believe I'll take it ."
The McGrane Award is the FWAA's highest honor and goes to a member who has made great contributions to the FWAA, journalism and to college football. It is the association's Hall of Fame, and the recipient is recognized at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta. McGrane, from the Des Moines Register, was the association's first executive director in the early 1940s until 1973. A few of those Shatel has looked up to, Bert McGrane winners, are in the room tonight.
It all started for Shatel back in Kansas City, Missouri, at the age of 13. He grew up reading sportswriters all over the country. He learned to type by typing their columns on an old typewriter. He always wanted to meet them. One of his prized possessions in high school was a single-spaced Red Sox game story that Peter Gammons gave him after he sent it to the Boston Globe on the telecopier. Shatel's passion for the profession has turned in to writng awards galore in college footbball and basketball.
"Tom Shatel found his niche as a columnist for the Omaha World-Herald in 1991 and has never looked back," said FWAA Executive Director Steve Richardson. " After graduating from Missouri, he spent time at the Kansas City Star and then briefly in St. Louis (Sun) and in Dallas (Morning News), before finding the perfect match in Omaha as the main columnist as well as his future wife, Jen. He covered the old Big Eight as a student in the 70s and as a professional at the Kansas City Star in the 1980s and then in the 1990s at the World-Herald as a columnist before the league became the Big 12 in 1996."
It was in 1997 that Shatel did some of his best work for the FWAA when he helped establish the Outland Trophy Awards Dinner in Omaha. where it still resides 30 years later at its third hotel.
"One of my favorite things that I’ve done in the FWAA is help initiate and complete the move of the FWAA’s Outland Trophy dinner from Oklahoma City to Omaha in 1997, " Shatel said. "The Outland was the opening act to the Thorpe Award in OKC. I felt the Outland, the second most prestigious college football award to the Heisman Trophy, needed to be a headliner. Nebraska, with its history of Outland winners and affection for college linemen, was the perfect fit. With FWAA Executive Director Steve Richardson’s guidance, I found a group in Omaha eager to give the Outland a new home.
"I remember selling the idea to the late, great Bob Mancuso, Sr., telling him it was the Heisman Trophy for linemen. Mancuso had the vision to understand that Omaha loved big events, loved college football and loved linemen. The first dinner in 1997, with Nebraska's Aaron Taylor the winner, was a sellout at the giant Holiday Inn ballroom. The event has moved twice, with a lineup of incredible winners, and thanks to Bob Mancuso Jr., now, it's better than ever."
The memories from Shatel are many from his college football tour that has lasted for decades.
After Missouri upset Nebraska, 35-31, in the final game of the 1978 season in Lincoln, forcing a tie for the Big Eight title between Nebraska and Oklahoma and a rematch in the Orange Bowl, he was hooked..
"That's where my journey began on a dark highway, somewhere between Omaha and Kansas City," Shatel recalled. "It was Nov. 18, 1978. Depending on the time of night, maybe it was Nov. 19. I had just covered a Missouri-Nebraska football game at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln. I was 20, a junior at the University of Missouri, working as sports editor of the Maneater paper. It was my first trip to Lincoln. This was the day I fell in love with college football.".
Other memories....
--Attending the Bear Bryant post-game press conference earlier that 1978 season at Missouri’s Faurot Field. "I was in charge of the visiting team sidebar. Because of the extreme heat and the crowd outside the locker room, the Bear wanted to do the presser on the Tide’s air-conditioned bus. The writers all piled on the bus and sat in the seats. Finally, Bryant came up the steps, short sleeve shirt, houndstooth hat, puffing on a cigarette. He spoke into the bus microphone, answered some questions, thanked everyone for being there and then he was gone."
— "Anytime spent with Oklahoma Coach Barry Switzer was a treat. One time in the OU locker room, Switzer introduced me to members of the band “Earth, Wind and Fire,” who were performing in Norman and hanging out with the team. That's Switzer. On the day before his Sooners beat Missouri 77-0 in 1986, I interviewed Switzer in his office while his team went through a walk-through on the field. Switzer leaned back in his chair, puffed on a cigar, feet with cowboy boots propped up on his desk, and told me the story of his childhood. The Bootlegger’s Boy story. It was incredible."
— "Tom Osborne (Nebraska coach) has been a recurring character in my career. The first time I met him was in October, 1988, at the Holidome hotel in Manhattan, Kan. I was there to cover Kansas State-Nebraska. I ended up in the Husker team hotel. On Saturday morning, as I nursed a big night in Aggieville, I sat in the hot tub in the middle of the dome. Suddenly, a tall figure stood over me. It was Osborne, introducing himself and wanting to set me straight on some things I had written about him. As I recall, we didn’t shake hands.
"I covered Tom (Osborne) from his aforementioned crushing loss to Mizzou in 1978 to his two-point conversion try in the Orange Bowl against Miami. His battles with Switzer, the 90’s dynasty run, the Lawrence Phillips saga and his sudden retirement from football. We had a good working relationship. I was never afraid to critique him (Phillips story) or ask tough questions. But I always showed up. After one game, as Osborne was walking through the press box to do his radio show, he looked over my shoulder as I was writing and said, “You misspelled a word.” Touche!
"I asked the final question at the Orange Bowl pre-game press conference before his final game in 1998. After giving a thoughtful answer, Osborne, who had heard I had gotten engaged the night before, said, “By the way, I understand Tom got engaged last night. Now there’s an upset!”
One more Osborne story: As he was going into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999, I asked the coach if he would do anything different with Phillips during the 1995 season. He said, “I’ve learned that you can’t save everybody. But that doesn’t mean you don’t try.”
Osborne and Switzer are my two favorite people in college football. One of my most memorable stories was doing a profile of the two coaches and their programs for the 1988 Sporting News yearbook. We got the two legends to pose for photos for the cover. I got them to autograph it.
"My all-time favorite football game was the 1984 Orange Bowl. Miami 31, Nebraska 30. An incredible collection of great players, teams and coaches playing out a high drama. Miami speed and athleticism seemed to fall out of the sky that night against a Nebraska team billed as the greatest team ever. Both traded the underdog role in 60 minutes culminating in the two-point try. We witnessed college football history that night: the beginning of the Miami, and state of Florida era. Still the greatest game I’ve had the privilege to watch and write about.
"There are so many others. The Orange Bowl Classic. Two that stand out above the rest were the 1994 (Florida State-Nebraska) and 1995 (Osborne beating Miami for his first national title). I loved that rickety old stadium. Every game was special there.
"The 1987 Kansas vs. Kansas State game. Both teams went into the game winless, and it ended in a perfectly hapless 17-17 tie. On the last play of the game, K-State blocked a KU field goal to win the game and both teams dove after the loose ball as it went out of bounds.There was the Nebraska-Missouri “Flea Kicker” game in 1997. The 1982 Independence Bowl, Kansas State’s first bowl, where the big story was a K-State player stealing a snapping turtle from the pond at the Shreveport Holiday Inn. The Big Eight turning into the Big 12. Then, for me, the Big Ten. I've seen the good, the bad and realignment.
"I began in a time when coaches like Switzer would host the writers with an open bar at the Norman, Okla., Holiday Inn an hour after the game (they wrote fast). Now we’re lucky to talk to coaches and players once a week. Now the stories are mostly about business. But there’s nowhere I’d rather be on a Saturday than a press box."
#30.
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-Miami 31, Nebraska 30 in 1984 Orange Bowl
-Nebbraska win over Florida State in Orange Bowl in 1994
Nebraska over Miami in Orange Bowl in 1995
Kansas-Kansas State game of winless teams.
Missouri-Nebraska Game in 1978
Lawrence Phillips
Barry Switzer
Tom Osborne.
Family