Seth Wickersham, senior writer for ESPN and author of “It’s Better to be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness,” stops by The I-5 Corridor podcast this week to share stories about Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and former Oregon State coach Mike Riley’s near miss at greatness.
But first, I had a question for Seth.
How does someone from Anchorage end up reporting the definitive piece on one of the best dynasties in sports history?
“When you grow up in Alaska, at least before the internet got going, you were just disconnected from the country, and I would subscribe to Sports Illustrated and to The Sporting News and to Time and Newsweek. And when you’d get the magazines, they were more than a week old. So when you’d read them, you’d kinda read them looking for something more than what most readers did. You’d read the stories looking for kind of a timelessness to them. So I kind of grew up thinking that’s what journalism was. And you cover these games and people, sure, but when you’re writing about them you want the story to feel vibrant, even way after its supposed due date. So when I decided I wanted to do journalism for a career and I went to the University of Missouri, that was kind of just the mentality that I had. I wanted to write stories that had that magazine quality to them.
I was fortunate to get hired at ESPN when I graduated from college and one of my very first assignments was to go to Foxborough, Massachusetts in November of 2001 to go interview this guy who was filling in well for Drew Bledsoe.”
That guy was Tom Brady.
Our interview with Seth begins at 22:25.
Plus: Aidan and Tyson on the start of the Blazers season, the Nick Rolovich mess at Washington State and what to make of these 5-1 Oregon Ducks.
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Podcast music by John Budnik Band.
Episode 12: Mike Riley's missed chance at the Tom Brady dynasty