(There have been complaints about how long this is. Try this instead

I didn't fall into sportswriting until my 21^st year on the planet, but in retrospect, maybe the signs were there all along.

From an early age, I loved sports of all types. I'm told, in fact, that my first public appearance as a child was an outing to one of the bigger events in the history of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan -- before the casino -- that being the welcome-home parade after the Central Michigan University Chippewas won the Division II football national championship in 1974. Central's coach that magical season was a guy named Roy Kramer, who later became commissioner of the SEC and purveyor of Bowl Championship Series propaganda. Who knew we would meet up 25 years down the road?

Anyway, back to what I was saying…the warning signs were there early. First off, as a kid, I was a particularly sloppy eater -- a dead giveaway that I was on track to spend a lifetime of inhaling food that I didn't pay for simply because it was there, trying not to spill it but not really worrying about it if I did. Ah well, I can forgive my parents, Mary Sue and Brick (don't ask, I didn't name him) for not enrolling me in the Young Sportswriters Academy or whatever the beginning training program at an early age would have been.

As I grew up, I settled into that American kid routine of watching sports on TV and going to games whenever my parents decided to take me. Of course, it started with Chippewa football that I don't even remember, but we'd also go to Tiger Stadium or wherever else. A pretty normal upbringing, really. Football in the fall, basketball in the winter, baseball in the spring and summer -- what more could anyone want?

By the time I got older, at least enough to start participating in sports instead of just sitting idly by, the next foreboding sign popped up. I had absolutely, positively no athletic talent.

Well, maybe that's a stretch. I mean, my dad was a star lineman for the Lincoln Park High School Railsplitters and dabbled a bit in football at Central, while my mom was a stellar tennis player during her high school years, though there wasn't a girls team at Trenton High back then. (Note: my mom just e-mailed me, stating indignantly that she also played four years in college at Central, including three at No. 1 singles. I had not been made aware of this before…)

Still, it was immediately apparent that I wasn't a natural athlete, which meant that if I wanted to get somewhere with my career, be somebody, do something, I'd have to work that much harder than the rest of the kids. So I didn't. I found that I liked reading quite a bit, so instead of going outside or watching TV, I'd often tear through Hardy Boys books or Civil War stories.

It was a happy existence, though, when it came down to arguing with my little sister Amy about whether or not it was right for G.I. Joe guys and Transformers be fighting each other, and debating the merits of whether the Joes really had a chance against Megatron.

Time passed, and we moved around a bit. From Mt. Pleasant to Holt to East Grand Rapids, Michigan, over my first 12 years. Then, in January of 1987, the Lancaster family made its most drastic move ever, to Arizona. I bitched and whined to no end, about leaving the only state I'd known to live in the desert. All I could picture was that Brady Bunch episode where they got stuck in that jail in the ghost town…

It was certainly an adjustment period, as the move came in the middle of my 7^th grade year, and we settled into a townhouse in Tempe, at least temporarily. My semester at Fees Junior High was regrettable, to say the least, but luckily we found a house in the next suburb over, Mesa, and moved there that summer.

My sister and I ended up at Rhodes Junior High in Mesa, a fine institution of middle learning that served me well. After another year of adjustment (8^th grade, which is all about adjustments), I finally came into my own the following year. One night, after attending an Arizona State basketball game with my dad, I was struck by the fact that it might be fun to be a public address announcer like that guy at ASU, I think his name was Jeff Munn.

So I pitched the thought to Coach Bill Flake, head coach of the 9^th grade boys basketball team, and he said to go for it. We got it all set up, in the most acoustically unappealing gym in the world, and there it went, I was the voice of the Roadrunners. I also ended up doing the morning announcements many days, which led to an even more ridiculous occurrence.

One day, the irrepressible chorus teacher Debby Gunby hauled me into her room and said I had a great voice and I should try out for the annual musical, which in the spring of '89 was "Oklahoma." I laughed. Shouldn't a professional realize there's a difference between talking and singing? But then I realized that there were actually some pretty cool people in chorus, which I would have to join if I wanted to be in the play, and I needed all the help I could get in that department…so I acquiesced. I became the sheriff, booming out my few lines and sounding like one of those Budweiser lizards on my four-word solo in the main title song. And somewhere, in my apartment right now, is a videotape of that performance. You won't be seeing it -- at least until the pre-nuptial agreement is signed.

Anyway, that ridiculous performance, which may explain my very high tolerance for musicals even to this day (insert your joke here), somehow catapulted my self-confidence forward as I entered Dobson High School the following year. Getting rid of the ridiculous plastic glasses I'd had since 6^th grade in favor of contact lenses helped as well.

Dobson was a fine place to be in those days, and we all had a pretty good high school experience. The Mustangs were always in contention on the athletic fields, and I found some way to be peripherally involved with all that, even if that meant just going to the games. I did continue my P.A. announcing schtick for the high school basketball team, something that carried me through all three years of high school.

Senior year, I got elected to the Student Council, as something called the Clubs Commissioner. To this day, I'm still not sure exactly what I did, but that was one of the better experiences I ever had, just getting to interact with a lot of different people and have fun doing it. Eventually, graduation rolled around in June of '92, and I was out of there -- literally.

My dad got a job with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta about this time, so it was another big move for the Lancasters. This time, I was really mad. I had fallen in love with Arizona, and certainly didn't want to go to Georgia. The Brady Bunch was bad enough; I didn't know if I could handle Dukes of Hazzard. At least I wouldn't have to become a Good Ol' Boy right off the bat -- I was heading off to school at The George Washington University in our nation's capital that fall.

GW was an interesting place, my freshman dorm three blocks west of the White House. D.C. grew on me pretty quickly -- I was a political science major, so that wasn't all too surprising. Before long, I got involved with the student radio station at GW, figuring it was the next logical option in my whole "voice-oriented" hobby path coming out of high school. We had some good times at WRTV, thinking ourselves very important while all the time realizing that absolutely nobody was listening to anything we did.

It wasn't all lovely -- the whole class thing got on my nerves, and I took the college freshman's prerogative by skipping plenty of them. I was getting homesick, too. Our family had always been close, and being away from them and my old friends in Arizona was tough. So I decided to come "home" to Atlanta.

That didn't last long. After a spring of sitting around and doing absolutely nothing, even working, my parents foolishly allowed me to go back to GW. So in the fall of '93 I made my return. Those class attendance problems of the previous fall increased exponentially, and for a variety of reasons, I ended up bailing out of Gee-Dub altogether again that fall, this time for good.

I went back to Atlanta and eventually found a job at a local movie theater and enrolled in community college to pass the time. Before long, I met a nice girl who was headed to the University of Georgia to start school in the fall of '94. After numerous trips to visit her, I decided it would make some sense to just move there and enroll at UGA myself.

So in January '95, I re-entered the world of the living, roughly a sophomore academically, and worlds away from my GW days, maturity-wise. I got my own apartment, so as not to deal with pesky roommates, and started to enjoy going to school again. It had been too long. I poked around the college radio scene at UGA, but found it to be highly unsatisfactory -- all they were interested in was playing music that even the musicians sounded like they weren't enjoying. So that option was out.

Then one day I wrote a letter to the sports editor of the school newspaper, The Red & Black. Mr. Mark Schlabach called me and told me he liked my writing style, and I should come down and basically try out with the sports staff. I figured I didn't have anything to lose, so I did. Eventually, under the tutelage of some good people like C.J. Johnson and young Kevin Price, I found I really liked it. I started working there full-time in the summer of '95, and it went on from there.

In the fall, I was the first-ever beat writer for the women's soccer team, which was in its inaugural season. That winter, I picked up the women's basketball team, which happened to make it all the way to the Final Four in Charlotte, losing to Tennessee in the championship game.

The day after that game marked the opening of spring quarter classes, and I was embarking on a new path -- management. I was the sports editor that quarter, getting a taste of the frustration involved in sitting in an office while everyone else got to do the fun stuff. Not that it wasn't a good experience, but it really made me appreciate being out there and writing. That still didn't stop me from applying for even higher management, and I was named managing editor of the paper for the summer of '96. Normally, the M.E. is the busiest person at the Red & Black, but summer is all about cruise control, and that was good, because with the Olympics coming, we had enough to occupy our time.

I had spent that basketball season working side-by-side in plenty of press rooms with the Athens Daily News beat writer, assistant sports editor Steve Colquitt. Later that spring, Steve was promoted to sports editor, and he told me to give him a call sometime about a job. I did, and when Lya Wodraska moved on to the Salt Lake Tribune after the '96 Olympics, I was hired full-time by the Daily News.

Before beginning that gig, I worked as a volunteer in press operations for the Olympic soccer competition at Sanford Stadium. Having the Olympic competition for the most popular sport on the planet just a few blocks from your apartment is a surreal experience, but one of the best I've ever had. I got to meet some interesting people, like George Vecsey of the New York Times, with whom I had a couple of brief conversations about sportswriting during dead times before or after games. It was a unique couple of weeks, no doubt. And seeing the U.S. women win the first gold medal in that sport in my adopted hometown was pretty amazing.

Well, at this point, I guess I was officially a professional. The only problem was, I still had a year of school left. So as I covered UGA soccer and volleyball and high school sports, along with sidebar duty on UGA football games, I had to learn the vagaries of page layout and formatting baseball box scores. And then try to study or write whatever paper was due that week. To say my stress level was high during that year would be a serious understatement. But at least I got to cover women's hoops in the winter with the knowledge that graduation would soon arrive.

Naturally, I procrastinated till the end. Though I walked with my graduating class at the end of spring quarter, '97, I didn't officially wrap up degree requirements for my A.B.J. in newspapers until summer quarter -- had to finish up an independent study class in my minor, political science. But at long last, I was out. Now all I had to do was work full-time, but I didn't know what to do with myself, I had so much free time.

Later that summer, our longtime Georgia football beat writer Chip Towers bolted for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I inherited the beat (and a 5-6 team) from Chip, who'd covered the Bulldogs for something like nine years. So with graduation finally behind me, I now had enough major beat coverage with football and women's basketball to keep me busy throughout the year.

Perhaps because of the change in beat writers (at least, that's what Chip thought at the time), the Bulldogs went 10-2 in '97, earning a trip to the Outback Bowl. As I sat in the press box at halftime of that game, which had an asinine 11:30 a.m. kickoff on New Year's Day, I realized what had come to pass. Here I was, in Tampa, covering a New Year's Day game sponsored by the best steakhouse around. There, on January 1, 1998, I reached an epiphany of sorts…this was, far and away, the pinnacle of press box food. God bless the Outback Bowl.

After getting lucky again by ringing in the year 2000 at the Outback Bowl once again, I decided not to tempt fate by sticking around much longer. Always know when to cut your losses. After one more season (my fifth overall) on the Lady Dogs basketball beat, and coordinating the paper's coverage of my favorite event, the NCAA men's tennis championships, for the third year in a row, I decided to take a hike.

My destination may surprise some of you, considering the quality of this particular website, but yes, I went online. On June 26^th, 2000, I started work as an associate producer for college sports at CNNSI.com in Atlanta, bringing the best of America's colleges to victims worldwide. Before long, I picked up tennis duties at SI.com, a natural fit for me. By early 2002, tennis was my only sport responsibility, but I was also tapped to coordinate the site itself a couple of days a week.

But I was getting tired of it all. I wasn't meant to sit at a desk in front of a computer all day. I need to be outside, talking to people, actually watching events. And I firmly believe that you're either a newspaper guy or you're not. I like to think of myself as one, so I started looking for a decent exit opportunity in a really bad job market.

In February 2002, I saw an ad on the 'net and somehow ended up conning the good people at the Cincinnati Post into hiring me for what is essentially a perfect position for me -- features, takeouts and general assignment, with University of Cincinnati football and Reds and Bengals backup duties thrown in. A little bit of everything. So now I'm back in the Midwest. I won't be here forever, but it's been great so far. We'll see what happens.

Have fun, folks. I'll see you down the road…