Cross & Crescent

“I always wanted to be a writer when I was a kid,” says Woody Paige (Tennessee-Knoxville 1968).

Paige and a neighbor would build cameras out of wooden boxes and use a kid’s printer to print newspapers and distribute them around the neighborhood.

“We would take turns playing TV anchors in front of our parents’ curtains,” he says. “We used to do radio, where one of us would be the personality and the other would be the listener.”

As Paige began his journalism career, he could not decide whether he wanted to pursue a career in newspapers, TV, or radio. “Oddly enough, I ended up with all three.”

A Reporter Is Born

Paige remembers being asked what his interests were while being a Lambda Chi Alpha pledge his freshman year at the University of Tennessee.

“All of the pledges were paired up with a brother with similar interests,” he says. “So if you were interested in going to law school, they would pair you up with someone who was on track for law school.”

“When they asked me, I said I was interested in newspapers and communications. So as a result, I was helped getting a job at the school newspaper and ended up being a disc jockey, as well and doing some campus TV.”

Paige also wrote a daily article for the university’s paper featuring humor and campus life. He would write on topics such as coming up with creative excuses for canceling a date.

“I had two dates, one Friday night and one on Saturday night. And on Thursday, both their grandmothers died. What are the chances of that?” Paige says. “I am not joking. One of the girls had four grandmothers die in the time I knew her!”

Becoming a TV Star

Following graduation, Paige ended up in Denver, Colorado, and did some talk radio and local TV. It was as a newspaper columnist though, that he started to become rather well known across the country.

From there he ultimately did shows like “Today” and “Good Morning America,” especially when they were covering high-profile stories from the Southwest, like the JonBenet Ramsey murder trial and the Oklahoma City bombing cases.

“I was more than a sports columnist, I was a journalist,” said Paige. “I covered the World Trade Center bombings. I traveled throughout the world and have done Olympics and wars and the sort.”

Paige has had a very successful career in journalism. He has won more than 100 local, state, and national awards; twice has been named one of the Top 100 journalists in the country by the Washington Journalism Review; and was voted the top sports columnist in Colorado.

Topping off the career accolades, he has had columns included in the Pulitzer Prize-winning packages for The Denver Post and was named to the Jim Murray Foundation Journalists Hall of Fame.

Paige spent 22 years as a radio talk show host, was a pro basketball TV analyst, and TV commentator and show host in Denver for 12 years.

In the past 40 years, Paige has covered more than 30 Super Bowls; 25 Masters, U.S. Opens, British Opens, and PGA Championships; 13 Olympics; Wimbledon and the U.S. Tennis Open; the World Series; the NBA Finals; the Stanley Cup; the Kentucky Derby; the Indianapolis 500; 25 professional title fights; every major bowl and national college football championship game; the Final Four; and sporting events in Europe, Australia, Asia, South America, and North America.

He says he enjoyed going to the British Open, Wimbledon, and the Olympics, but didn’t really enjoy people from other countries getting mad at him.

“I went to France for the Albertville Olympics and wrote that the German hockey team got off the plane and France surrendered,” he laughs. “I didn’t realize that there were so many French people in the country.”

ESPN Comes Calling

When the president of ESPN courted Paige to move to New York and work full time for the network, he was surprised. “Sports is a vehicle,” says Paige. “My love is writing.”

He told the network that they didn’t want to hire him because he doesn’t live and die sports. “The ESPN president told me that they had hundreds of people that live and die sports and what they really needed was someone to be creative, funny, and different,” he says.

ESPN began using Paige on a number of different programs and eventually created a program just for him.

“Around the Horn” was created just for Paige, and when it became hugely successful, ESPN wanted him to do more shows.

He started doing “Cold Pizza,” ESPN’s version of “Today” and other morning shows. He then did a show called “Dream Job,” a sports version of “American Idol,” where he was the controversial judge. He is also entering his second year on “1st and 10.”

“I am on national TV 6.5 hours a day, which is stunning to me,” Paige says. “I always wondered what kind of talent Regis Philbin has, and now I found out for I am kind of like him — I have no redeeming social talent.”

People always ask Paige how he got his job. “I say, wait 40 years and become an overnight success.”

Fraternity Influence

Paige says he values the time he spent with Lambda Chi Alpha. He believes it helped build character and has the ability to shape people who they are at an older age.

“Your family and your religion set the values foundation for you,” Paige says. “The fraternity serves a third part of the foundation because it teaches so many value systems that make you who you are today.”

He stays in contact with 15 to 20 brothers he went to school with and sees it as a microcosm of the fraternity as a whole. The brothers all learned the same values from Lambda Chi Alpha to get where they are today.

“There is something to be said because no one I know robbed banks or were part of Enron stealing people’s money,” he says.

Paige went back to the University of Tennessee to speak at the School of Journalism 25th anniversary. He decided to walk over to fraternity house, which he hadn’t done in a number of years.

“I saw this guy I went to school with and I thought he was going to come up to me like everyone and say ‘I see you on TV.’ Instead, he said, ‘Woody Paige, did you ever find a job?’ It was at that point, I knew I would always stay humble.”