Sports Loop
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Over nearly 30 years at The Charlotte Observer, columnist Scott Fowler has built an unparalleled rolodex of hardwood heroes, gridiron greats, hall-of-fame coaches, and sports media luminaries throughout the region. Now, thanks to access fans won’t get anywhere else, Fowler sits down with icons from the area — including Muggsy Bogues, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jay Bilas, and more — to hear the unfiltered, untold stories of their journeys to becoming Sports Legends of the Carolinas.
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As the oldest head coach in college football’s top division, UNC’s Mack Brown now anticipates the question about when he’s going to retire long before recruits or their parents pose it. “It gets asked before they say hello now,” Brown said. Brown will turn 73 on Aug. 27th, two days before the Tar Heels’ 2024 season opener at Minnesota. Now that Ala…
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Julius Peppers, a fearsome pass-rushing defensive end, was one of the greatest Carolina Panther players ever. We caught up with Peppers at his home in Coral Gables, Fla., where he lives with his wife and children. He is preparing for a big weekend -- on Aug. 3rd, Peppers will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was elected in his fir…
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It’s almost time for the Summer Olympics to take over the sports world, as it does every four years. The opening ceremonies are July 26th in Paris. And so for the first time in the three seasons of “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” we went poolside to have a a candid conversation with Olympic swimmer and two-time gold medalist Cullen Jones. Former…
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In North Carolina’s mountains, a football coach named Jerry Moore led Appalachian State to new heights two decades ago. Now 84, Moore coached the Mountaineers from 1989-2012 and built a dynasty in Boone, N.C. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, he directed the Mountaineers all the way to the top of the mountain, winning three straight national titles at the FC…
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Long before he became one of the biggest names in footwear, Stan Smith dazzled on the tennis court. Smith, 77, is a tennis hall of famer who won both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in the early 1970s and was once ranked as the world’s No. 1 tennis player. He grew up in California but has lived for more than 50 years in Hilton Head, S.C., where he rema…
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Jimmie Johnson is, without question, one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history. Three drivers rank at the very top of the all-time NASCAR Cup series champion standings, each with seven season titles apiece. They are Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt Sr., and Johnson. Of those three legends, Johnson is the only one who won five titles consecutively,…
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Muggsy Bogues remains the shortest player ever to play in the NBA, at 5-foot-3. Bogues stayed in the league for 14 years, most notably as the point guard for the exciting Charlotte Hornets teams of the 1990s that also starred Larry Johnson, Alonzo Mourning and Dell Curry. At age 57, he still lives in the Charlotte area today. We sat down in Bogues’…
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While Dell Curry is now known in public mostly for being the father of two-time NBA Most Valuable Player Steph Curry, he had his own stellar NBA career. Known for his three-point sharpshooting at a time when the NBA was far less enamored with that long-distance shot, the elder Curry had a 16-year NBA career that included 10 years as a player for th…
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As the NFL Draft approaches, the Carolina Panthers can only hope to hit a second-round home run like they did with Muhsin Muhammad. The Panthers hold two high second-round picks — the 33rd and 39th overall — in the draft that starts April 25. In 1996, Muhammad was a promising wide receiver out of Michigan State that Carolina nabbed with the 43rd ov…
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Ahead of the Women's Final Four, in this special rebroadcast episode (originally aired on October 5th, 2022), Scott Fowler sits down with legendary USC coaching legend Dawn Staley. Dawn Staley, star of this week’s episode of “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” has had one of the most sensational careers in women’s basketball history. Currently the h…
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Alonzo Mourning would have become the greatest player in Charlotte Hornets history — if he had only stuck around. Mourning played his first three NBA seasons with Charlotte after the Hornets drafted him No. 2 overall in 1992. He quickly turned into an intimidating, 6-foot-10 star for a Charlotte team on the rise. His scowl could scare you. His dunk…
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In Gastonia, Leonard Hamilton remembers restaurants he wasn’t allowed to come inside due to his skin color. He sat in the balcony of a movie theater because Blacks weren’t allowed to sit downstairs. He drank from one water fountain; whites drank from another. With the help of faith and family, Hamilton rose from those circumstances to a coaching ca…
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The siren song of a bouncing basketball led Bobby Cremins all over the Carolinas. Cremins crisscrossed both states during his hoops journey. He played basketball under Frank McGuire at the University of South Carolina in the late 1960s. He left for North Carolina to become the head coach at Appalachian State at age 27. At the end of his career, he …
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Richard Petty is 86 years old now, and his seven NASCAR Cup championships and record 200 wins at the sport’s highest level came long ago. But Petty is still going strong in Level Cross (pop. 3694), which sits right in the middle of Charlotte and Raleigh. Petty lives a stone’s throw from the house where he was born, and that house sits right next to…
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From 1987-89, Steve Spurrier was the head coach at Duke, leading the Blue Devils to an ACC Football Championship in 1989. As a player, he won the Heisman Trophy in 1966 at the University of Florida. Coach Spurrier then returned to Florida as its coach in 1990. Known as an offensive mastermind, Spurrier led the Gators to multiple SEC titles, as well…
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As a once-in-a-generation quarterback at Appalachian State in Boone, N.C., Armanti Edwards led the Mountaineers to FCS national championships in 2006 and 2007 as well as an extraordinary road win over then-No. 5 Michigan, often called the biggest upset in college football history. Lightly recruited out of Greenwood, S.C., Edwards would become the f…
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Steph Curry, the all-everything point guard for the Golden State Warriors, is still in the prime of his career and already a “Sports Legend of the Carolinas.” In this deeply personal retrospective, the eight-time All-Star, four-time NBA champ and two-time league MVP offers Scott Fowler never-before-heard details about Curry's high school career for…
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While Dell Curry is now known in public mostly for being the father of two-time NBA Most Valuable Player Steph Curry, he had his own stellar NBA career. Known for his three-point sharpshooting at a time when the NBA was far less enamored with that long-distance shot, the elder Curry had a 16-year NBA career that included 10 years as a player for th…
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Kicking off Season 2 of Sports Legends of the Carolinas, this week's guest is Greg Olsen, who lit up opposing defenses for nine years as a Pro Bowl tight end for the Carolina Panthers, and has had an extraordinary start to his second career: calling color for the NFL on FOX. Olsen lives in Charlotte with his wife Kara and their three children — Tat…
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Tommy Burleson was the literal centerpiece of one of the best college basketball teams in the history of the Carolinas — the 1974 N.C. State Wolfpack. Burleson, point guard Monte Towe and high-flying forward David Thompson led that N.C. State team to a national championship, ending UCLA’s streak of seven consecutive NCAA titles in the national semi…
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In 1994, Jeff Gordon won his first race in NASCAR’s signature series, taking the checkered flag at the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway at age 22. Gordon would win 92 more times after that, becoming racing royalty and a NASCAR hall of famer. Now he’s our latest subject of “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” the multimedia project in which w…
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As a child growing up in Gibsonville, N.C., Torry Holt occasionally pulled tobacco for $5 an hour. Holt would later grow up to make millions in the NFL after starring at N.C. State, where the wide receiver was named the ACC’s Player of the Year in 1998. Our interview subject this week for “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” Holt once scored five tou…
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This week on Sports Legends of the Carolinas, Alex Zietlow interviews Coach Mike Krzyzewski, or Coach K. Mike Krzyzewski served as an astonishing basketball coach for 47 years and has impacted the game and this state forever. In his 42 years coaching the Blue Devils, he led the team to 5 national titles, 13 Final Fours and 1,202 wins — the most all…
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Thomas Davis is one of the most popular players in Carolina Panthers history, as well as one of the toughest. The Panthers’ all-time leading tackler, Davis is also the only player in NFL history to successfully come back from three ACL surgeries on the very same knee. Not only that, he played in Super Bowl 50 following the 2015 season after breakin…
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Not too many former college football players can point to a Heisman Trophy sitting in their TV room and persuade you to pick it up to feel its weight, but former South Carolina running back George Rogers can. As we anticipate Saturday night’s season opener between South Carolina and North Carolina in Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium, one of the …
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Erin Matson was arguably the best field hockey player in NCAA history. While at UNC, she led the Tar Heels to four national championships, and three times she was named the national player of the year. Then came a startling twist -- at age 22, only one month after graduation, Matson was named the head coach of the very UNC team she had been starrin…
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Bobby Richardson, this week’s star of “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” was a notable New York Yankee who never really left his South Carolina hometown. Born and raised in Sumter, S.C., about 110 miles southeast of Charlotte, Richardson still lives there today, with his wife Betsy, in a house he built in 1960. He turns 88 years old in August but s…
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Bill Polian made it into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2015, honored as one of the NFL’s most extraordinary general managers. The subject of this week’s “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” interview, Polian was a team-builder with a gift for pinpoint player evaluation and crisp contract negotiation. He revitalized the fortunes of three different N…
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Chris Paul has done nearly everything there is to do on a basketball court. He grew up in Winston-Salem, starred at Wake Forest, was drafted No. 4 overall in the 2005 NBA draft and then went on to become a 12-time NBA all-star and a two-time Olympic gold medalist for Team USA. Paul has only one major hole in his basketball résumé -- an NBA champion…
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As a once-in-a-generation quarterback at Appalachian State in Boone, N.C., Armanti Edwards led the Mountaineers to FCS national championships in 2006 and 2007 as well as an extraordinary road win over then-No. 5 Michigan, often called the biggest upset in college football history. Lightly recruited out of Greenwood, S.C., Edwards would become the f…
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This week on Sports Legends of the Carolinas, Alex Zietlow interviews Coach Mike Krzyzewski, or Coach K. Mike Krzyzewski served as an astonishing basketball coach for 47 years and has impacted the game and this state forever. In his 42 years coaching the Blue Devils, he led the team to 5 national titles, 13 Final Fours and 1,202 wins — the most all…
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Debbie Antonelli, a 1986 NC State graduate, has been a major influence in the women’s college basketball circles for 35 years and has served as an analyst for ESPN in numerous capacities. Her announcing career also includes calling games for CBS, Fox Sports Net, Big Ten Network, NBATV and Westwood One, as well as WNBA games. The Cary, N.C. native b…
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In 1994, Jeff Gordon won his first race in NASCAR’s signature series, taking the checkered flag at the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway at age 22. Gordon would win 92 more times after that, becoming racing royalty and a NASCAR hall of famer. Now he’s our latest subject of “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” the multimedia project in which w…
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George Shinn, who conceived the Charlotte Hornets and brought the NBA to Charlotte, remains a busy man at age 81. Shinn was the Hornets’ original owner and — because of Charlotte’s great attendance and merchandising success, also indirectly had a hand in the NFL deciding the Queen City was worthy of a pro football franchise. The young boy from Kann…
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Tyler Hansbrough needs no introduction to UNC fans. Hansbrough finished his UNC basketball career in 2009 with a national championship and as both the Tar Heels' and the ACC's all-time leading scorer, with 2872 points. Hansbrough then played seven years in the NBA and for three years after that in China. Now, at age 37, Hansbrough is figuring out w…
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Cedric Maxwell, the second interview subject for the 2023 season of “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” was an All-American big man who led the 49ers to the 1977 Final Four. That remains the school’s only Final Four appearance, and Charlotte might have won it all that year but for a controversial non-call at the buzzer against Marquette. In Maxwell’…
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Kicking off Season 2 of Sports Legends of the Carolinas, this week's guest is Greg Olsen, who lit up opposing defenses for nine years as a Pro Bowl tight end for the Carolina Panthers, and has had an extraordinary start to his second career: calling color for the NFL on FOX. Olsen lives in Charlotte with his wife Kara and their three children — Tat…
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To tie a bow on the first season of Sports Legends of the Carolinas, Scott Fowler sits down with visual journalist Jeff Siner, Charlotte Observer executive editor Rana Cash, and lead podcast producer Kata Stevens to revisit their favorite moments from this season of legends. This special bonus episode of Sports Legends of the Carolinas is free for …
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Steph Curry, the all-everything point guard for the Golden State Warriors, is still in the prime of his career and already a “Sports Legend of the Carolinas.” In this deeply personal retrospective, the eight-time All-Star, four-time NBA champ and two-time league MVP offers Scott Fowler never-before-heard details about Curry's high school career for…
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This week on “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” we welcome legendary former University of North Carolina men’s head basketball coach Roy Williams. Over nearly 50 years of coaching at various levels, Williams won three national titles; then retired in 2021 as the only head coach in college basketball history to win more than 400 games at two differe…
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This week on “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” a guest who earned that descriptor throughout a basketball coaching career that spanned half a century at various levels of the game: former University of North Carolina men’s head coach Roy Williams. Williams won three national titles as the head coach of the Tar Heels, and retired in 2021 as the onl…
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Charlotte Smith, this week’s guest on “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” is about to enter her 12th year as Elon’s women’s basketball coach. On Part 2 of our conversation, the all-time winningest coach at the school looks back at the road to her “blessed place,” Elon; getting posterized in the movie Juwanna Mann; and the immense strength she has fo…
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Charlotte Smith, this week’s guest on “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” is about to enter her 12th year as Elon University’s women’s basketball coach. But the all-time winningest coach at the school is arguably better known for her own college playing career, thanks to making one of the most remarkable shots in NCAA tournament basketball history —…
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Jay Bilas, this week’s guest on “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” is ESPN’s leading college basketball analyst, and in many ways, the conscience of the sport. On Part 2 of our conversation, the 58-year-old Bilas looks back at his acting career, the toughest opponent he ever faced on the hardwood, and the leap of faith that made his broadcasting ca…
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Jay Bilas, this week’s guest on “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” is ESPN’s leading college basketball analyst, and arguably the preeminent voice in the entire sport. A former Duke basketball player who started for the 1986 Blue Devils team that made it to the NCAA finals, Bilas' journey to national prominence included far more than basketball: He…
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Phil Ford, one of the best players in University of North Carolina basketball history, is this week’s guest on “Sports Legends of the Carolinas.” The 1978 National Player of the Year, Ford held UNC’s scoring record for 30 years until Tyler Hansbrough broke it in 2008. In Part 2 of our conversation, Ford reflects on following in the footsteps of fel…
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Phil Ford, one of the best players in University of North Carolina basketball history, is this week’s guest on “Sports Legends of the Carolinas.” The 1978 National Player of the Year and a longtime assistant basketball coach at UNC, Ford held UNC’s scoring record for 30 years (despite playing in an era with no three-point shot), until Tyler Hansbro…
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Judy Rose, this week’s guest on “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” was a trailblazing athletic director for the UNC Charlotte 49ers for 28 years, before retiring in 2018. Under her leadership, the 49ers won 70 league titles in 14 sports. In Part 2 of our conversation, Rose reflects on fundraising in the modern era of college sports; name, image and…
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Judy Rose, this week’s guest on “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” was a trailblazing athletic director for the UNC Charlotte 49ers for 28 years, before retiring in 2018. Rose was also only the third woman to serve as an AD of a Division I school, and the first to be named to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee. Under her leadership, the 49ers won …
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Former Davidson basketball coach Bob McKillop, this week’s star of “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” is the first person I’ve interviewed two separate times for this series. I first sat down with McKillop in late May, shortly after he had finished his 33rd season as the head basketball coach at Davidson. Then, 17 days later, McKillop retired in an…
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