Former Herdzone.com columnist and Herd Insider editor Jack Bogaczyk officially retired on June 30th after more than 40 years as a beat reporter, editor and columnist.

Now a few weeks into his retirement, Parthenon Sports Editor Adam Rogers sat down with the man behind the byline to allow Thundering Herd fans who came to love his stories a chance to learn more about him.

Adam Rogers: You started in Kentucky by graduating from high school there and then went to the University of Kentucky. Now you’re going back there again. What’s it like to see things come full circle with you going back to where you started?

Jack Bogaczyk: Well, what’s funny is Carol and I have been married 44 years on August 25, and we both grew up there, but never lived there. Because I had taken a job in Binghamton, New York for a newspaper in June of 1972, about a month after I graduated (from UK), and then we got married in August. So we’ve never lived where we’re from, so we’re going back there. We’ve got a lot of friends there, got family there. So we’ll try it and see how it is. It’s a little strange, but it seemed like, at the time, the right place to go instead of trying to cast around and find somewhere. Now maybe we’ll get there and we’ll say ‘okay, maybe we will cast around.’ The other thing is we’d like to, at least, spend a couple of months each winter in Florida, especially in March, because we both like spring training baseball. So we’re going to try to see a lot of spring training baseball, probably somewhere on the gulf coast like Sarasota, Bradenton, Fort Myers, something like that.

AR: What was the process like for you in getting your first job in New York? And how did you end up going from there to jobs in Virginia and West Virginia?

JB: I was writing for a paper in northern Kentucky while I was in college. In fact, my sophomore year I didn’t go to school on campus at UK. I went to what is now Northern Kentucky University, then Northern Community College. I went there because I could work 40 full time hours at a newspaper called the Kentucky Post, which was delivered with the Cincinnati Post on the Kentucky side of the river, and take my 15 hours a semester. So I could get the practical experience, and that really helped me I think. Then, when I became a senior at UK back in the day, I guess they still do this, different newspaper chains would send recruiters in to talk to journalism students and Gannett, which owned the Binghamton paper, sent someone in and so I interviewed with them. They called me, they said if you want a job you can either go to Elmira, New York; Binghamton, New York; or Bellingham, Washington. Because I had an uncle and an aunt, two separate families, that lived in the Binghamton area I thought, well with Carol being newlywed and I’d be gone at nights a lot, so it would be important to have some family there. So that’s how we got there. It was like I didn’t really have to go look for a job, the job kind of looked for me and in that way, I was fortunate. I was there until Thanksgiving weekend of ‘74 and we moved to Roanoke, Virginia. I went to work at the time for, it was still two papers back in the old days, an afternoon paper, The World News, and eventually they merged the Roanoke Times and The World News, then they got rid of the name The World News. So I worked for the Roanoke newspapers for 26 ½ years. Left there and went to work, the NBA hired me to be the PR guy for the NBDL team. The NBDL was just starting then, the Roanoke Dazzle. I probably would have stayed there longer, I was only there 15 months because the NBA lost a lot of money the first year of the league. They estimated that each team lost $7 million, I don’t know if that was accurate or not, but they were changing all the PR jobs in the league to sales jobs, and I didn’t want to sell. I was fortunate at the time the Charleston Daily Mail was looking for a columnist. Jody Jividen, who had been their columnist, had died of cancer and I think in the summer of 2002, and they were looking for a columnist in October. I contacted them and they were already into their interview process, and they said your name had come up to somebody, but we thought you were retired. Well at the time I was only 52-years old, so I wasn’t retired. That’s how I ended up in Charleston and I’m there for 14 month when they ask me to be sports editor. So I did that in addition to being columnist. Then in 2012, actually in late 2011, I reached out to Mike Hamrick and said I got tired of trying to manage the sports department and write at the same time. I wanted to write and, as you know, a lot colleges are hiring ‘former newspaper sportswriters’ for their websites and to drive more traffic on their websites. So I approached Mike Hamrick and said would you be interested in having me do this for you. WVU has a guy, Virginia Tech has a guy. I just mentioned all these other schools, and a lot of conference have people. I just said I think it will add something to your program, and I knew Mike pretty well. So we kept talking for several months and then I went to work for both Marshall and, Mike worked a deal with Mike Kirtner, so then I worked both sides of the street as Editor of the Herd Insider for Kindred Communications and I worked for Marshall University for the Athletic Department writing for herdzone.com.

AR: You talked about you approached Mike about you coming on board. When Mike came back to you and said they wanted to hire you, what was the first thing you wanted to get a jump on and help get exposure for the program?

JB: The biggest thing I sold to Mike and he got Mike Kirtner on board for the Herd Insider Editorship, was this was an opportunity to get exposure for the Marshall programs that rarely get exposure off-campus. Swimming, men’s golf, track and field, cross country. Everything besides men’s basketball, women’s basketball and football; everybody does those. Charleston covers them, the Herald Dispatch covers them, the Parthenon covers them, all the websites cover them, but that was one of the main sales points to Mike Hamrick. I said I can write about these sports. Your people, your contributor, your Big Green people will know about a player on Shonda Stanton’s softball team. I think he really like that idea and, of course, because those coaches and those athletes don’t get much exposure, they were thrilled about it. It was just like ‘you’re going to write something about us?’ With Mike Kirtner and the Herd Insider, one of the selling points was I thought the magazine needed some consistency. I thought the magazine should be in AP style, I thought there was way too much game coverage and with the internet age now, if people want to know about a game they’re going to know about it the same night it’s played or at the very latest the next morning. A game story five days later, to me, is not very effective. Mike K wanted more feature material in that magazine and Mike Hamrick wanted feature material on the website. For me, what I like to do best is writing and I got to do that. I wrote over 1,100 stories in four years and a month. So that was great and in some ways I was my own boss. I was picking out my subject matter for the most part and that was the fun part of it. The thing I tried to make evident was that there are a lot of good, not just athletes in these other sports, but a lot of good people. People always jump on when a football player gets arrested or a basketball player flunks off the team, but you talk to the other people in the other sports and not only are they glad to get this exposure, they’re great people. A Katie Kramer swimming the Straits of Gibraltar. I mean, how many other colleges have had someone that’s done that, I would say very few. That’s one of the neater stories I did. Just getting to meet the athletes. The difference I noticed from working at a newspaper to working on a college campus is just the vitality and vibrancy of the college campus made the job fun. I’ll always love newspaper and I’ll always be an inkstained guy. The thing I liked about what I did for 45 years was that everyday you’d show up for the job and it would be different. You’re going to interview somebody different or if you’re interviewing the same person, they’re going to have a different story. I hate to compare it to working in a bank, but it’s not like working in a bank or whatever where you do the same thing everyday. So that adds intrigue to the job and keeps you fresh I think.

AR: I know we joked about your hatred for the traffic light in the mid-1600 block of 5th Avenue frequently. But what did it mean to you to have Huntington Mayor Steve Williams present the proclamation and street sign to you during your farewell show on the First Sentry Bank Sportsline at Kindred Communications recognizing that very same traffic light as the honorary Jack Bogaczyk Traffic Light?

JB: I was very touched. It kind of became a running joke for a while and then it was sort of like let’s shut up about it, because it was like how many times can you beat a dead horse. So I was totally surprised. I had no idea and it was great because it was kind of like a touchstone. (The light) got me in the door at the time, back in the day when I first started talking about this, with the mayor. The mayor came on one day with Paul Swann and I and started talking about the baseball park and kind of got that rolling. Then I wrote a story about it for Herdzone.com and the Herd Insider and that was the first time, I think, that somebody was quoted so much on the possibiltiy of Huntington having a ballpark. A lot of politicians and public officials are very stuffy, and Steve Williams is anything but. Yes, he’s really good at what he does and he’s the ultimate politician, but it helps him get his job done. So I was really touched by it and I was really surprised.

AR: You also covered the Washington Redskins for 11 seasons. What was that experience like to travel and be part of the everyday NFL media?

JB: I didn’t travel much. I went to training camp for about a week and I covered all their home games, at RFK Stadium and then at FedEx Field. We’d go to the occasional road game. I’d get in the car and drive to Philadelphia, I flew to Dallas one time and covered a game. I went to Giants Stadium. As the Roanoke Times, we didn’t cover the road games. The Norfolk paper covered the Redskins 24/7. The Roanoke paper and Norfolk paper were sister papers, so the Roanoke paper used Norfolk’s copy. But the thing that struck me when I showed up to do pro football, because I had never done pro football other than a few features on Virginia Tech players who had gone onto the NFL like a Bruce Smith at Buffalo, being there during training camp day after day was how big the offensive lineman were combined with speed. Like the hogs, you had a guy like Joe Jacoby the tackle, who was 6’8”, 310 lbs and he moved like a linebacker. That, I think stuck me as the biggest difference between major college football and the NFL. Not just how fast the game was, but the players within the game. Joe Gibbs was the coach and he couldn’t have been more accommodating. The people that were the PR people, even back then this was early 90’s until 2001, got it right. Their PR people knew how to do things, knew what the reporters were looking for and the players were very accommodating too. It was like this is part of your contract, you’re going to do this. It wasn’t like you had a bunch of guys hiding in the training room, they knew. You could get anybody you want unless that person just had a totally miserable day. It was a lot of fun, it was really different.

AR: You’ve covered a Super Bowl, an Olympics, NCAA Tournaments and Final Fours. What would you say is the most enjoyable time you’ve had covering a major sporting event?

JB: It wouldn’t be the Super Bowl, because it was the one in Minnesota between the Redskins and Bills. It was probably below zero most of the time I was there. I went outdoors one time. Because if people remember the Mary Tyler Moore tv show, here I am dating myself, they had all these overhead walkways and they were enclosed. So you could walk from hotels to interview rooms, which were in other hotels, in these overhead walkways. The only time I went outside the entire time I was there was when I was going from the press bus into the Metrodome. So I was there for like six days and only went outside for like five minutes. It was a lot of fun, but the Super Bowl was a circus. The most fun I always had and the thing I always enjoyed covering the most was the entire NCAA tournament in a year, because you’re covering the first and second rounds. Then you covered the regions and then the Final Four. I covered 24 NCAA Tournaments and 11 Final Fours. Just getting to go through the process. One of the neatest things was in ‘79, the mideast regional was in Indianapolis at old Market Square Arena, where the Pacers play, and the midwest arena was in Cincinnati at what was then called Riverfront Coliseum, it’s now US Bank Arena. They were on opposite days, one was a Thursday-Saturday setup and one was a Friday-Sunday setup. Cincinnati and Indianapolis are only 110 miles apart, so you can drive it easily. My parents lived across the river from Cincinnati, where my wife and I are going now, so I could stay with them and I literally drove back and forth to cover those two. Plus, Larry Bird played in the one in Cincinnati and Magic Johnson played in the one in Indianapolis. Of course I didn’t get to go to that Final Four, in ‘79 one of my bosses went in Salt Lake City, but I got to see those guys play and just driving back and forth covering it. A lot of guys did that back then, but that was really neatest things ever. The other thing that was neat was in ‘83, the Phillies and the Orioles were both in the baseball postseason. We had gone to Baltimore for a lot of games during the regular season, I probably went to 10 or 12 a year and I went to Atlanta for 10 or 12 games a year, just get in the car and drive and you’d go write features stories and things like that. With Baltimore and Philadelphia both in the playoff, that’s an easy drive too and some of those were on opposite days. So I was gone for 14 days covering the National League and American League Championship Series, and the World Series, driving back and forth between the two and in a 14 day period I wrote 42 stories on the baseball postseason. That was cool, that was really cool.

AR: Would you say your favorite part about being a journalist for this long was telling people’s stories and letting people know about the good things going on in their community?

JB: People, fans, focus on the games. I’ve seen a lot of games, tons of games. I’ve seen some great games, I’ve seen some terrible games. But to me, it’s about the people in the games. Those are the stories that are most interesting to tell. A lot of fans get caught up in the process. ‘You get in the games for free?’ Well, they forget that you have to get there, if you’re going to do your job right, 2 ½ hours early and you’re going to be there afterwards writing the story. The only advantage to getting there early and leaving late is that there are no traffic jams, unless you’re at the Daytona 500 and then you’d better get there six hours early. But the people drive things. That’s why I always try to tell young people when I’d go talk to high schools and grade schools and stuff, don’t worry about the games. It’s the people that are important, whether you’re talking about the people you’re writing about, and you darn well better tell their story accurately, and the people that are reading this story. You have people at both ends of the deal that are entrusting you with doing this stuff right, getting it right and not going off on some halfcocked tangent where you don’t know what you’re talking about.

AR: What advice do you have for an aspiring journalist seeking their first job in the real world after having a background in school?

JB: Well it’s totally different now because you have the web, Twitter, blogs and Instagram; and yes that’s changed everything. But to me still, the biggest thing is what I managed to get both while I was in high school and while I was in college was practical experience. You can take bookoo journalism classes and communications classes, but if you have the chance to take a summer internship or summer job that will put you in the fray, so to speak. That to me is the most important thing, that helped me more than anything I learned at any journalism class I took at the University of Kentucky. I mean, I got a good education there and a good education in high school, but the practical experience I felt like when I went to Binghamton and beyond I knew what I was doing. That to me is, if I’m going to give some advice to somebody, just go out and work at the craft, read a lot and practice writing. But to me, practical experience with an organization, a newspaper, a radio station, tv station or whatever, but to me that’s the biggest thing.

AR: Is there anything else you want people to know about your time in journalism?

JB: I guess I’d like people to know that I worked hard at it, I took a lot of pride in what I did and I take a lot of pride in the business. I always have tried to help young people I work with like yourself, like the people in the Sports Information Office at Marshall, like younger people I worked with in newspapers like Chuck McGill, who is sort of filling the same role I had at Marshall, is kind of one of the guys I mentored. Jacob Messer and a bunch guys back in Roanoke. The guy who helped me out a lot early was the late Bill Brill, he was the sports editor back in Roanoke, and I kind of remember what he did with myself and a guy who still works in Roanoke, Doug Doughty, and he really mentored us. It was kind of like you pass it down, so to speak. I would like people to know that I think that’s almost as important to me as the writing part. You show up to do a job and you do the job. Sometimes the job is filing a 20-inch column in 20 minutes after the national championship game and you have write 600 words. Sometimes it’s just coming in and dealing with whatever happens during the day. That’s one of the fun parts because you walk in and a story breaks, you get on that story. To me, breaking a story was important, but I wanted to get it right. I wasn’t going to let something go out there with my name or, when I was sports editor, with my name on the section unless we knew it was right before it went out.