I really should have gotten around to this at least 12 hours ago, but I was too busy with my own writing career to remark on the tragic end of a great one.
Will McDonough, who spent four decades at the Boston Globe but may be best known as the first print journalist to earn a network TV gig (NFL Today, mid-'80s), passed away at the age of 67 in his South Shore home late Thursday night.
Fittingly enough, he was watching sports on television.
I'm not going to go into great detail about McDonough's career -- let's just say he was arguably the star of the best sports staff ever assembled. McDonough, the paper's NFL guru, was the star -- and probably the first of the bunch to get true widespread national recognition. Peter Gammons and Bud Collins landed TV jobs largely because of Will's breakthrough.
McDonough had covered every Super Bowl to date, and he dreamed of seeing the Pats take one. It's probably fitting that they prevailed in his last dance.
But enough biography -- the sports pages are littered with all of it today. Allow me to share my personal Will Experiences...which were all too brief.
I never really had the opportunity to meet the man -- at least I didn't have the chance to sit down and chat -- but McDonough seemed to pop into my life at the most peculiar times, and there are two I remember vividly.
The first time was when I was about nine years old, and my dad took me to the ol' sardine can known as Schaefer Stadium in Foxboro for my first NFL game. During that year, the Globe had run a "Beat Will McDonough" contest, where you mail in your NFL picks each week, and if you beat him, you won a T-shirt.
As luck would have it, I was wearing one (of my four) that day, and as luck would also have it, our seats were in the back row, right in front of the press box -- and smack dab in front of McDonough's seat. My dad held me up in the writer's line of sight, and as he saw the gloating youth in front of him, he just feigned a "fuck, you got me" look and laughed.
The second run-in was even more happenstance. I had graduated from ND and was heading into Boston to take a drug test for the soon-to-be shortlived ESPN job I'd just landed. My friend (who ironically had fishbowled the car on the way) and I had trouble finding the building, so I pulled over to ask directions.
We got our directions -- and as soon as I pulled away, I realized who had given them to us.
It was Will McDonough.
That was the first legit job I landed in my career -- and that day was the last time I saw Will McDonough in the flesh.
I can only hope to carry a torch of that magnitude.
-- O
5:48:04 AM 
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