Section A • Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, April 25, 2001
Whitlock loads up on controversy, barbecue
Jason Whitlock turns to catch his breath during an interview with Kansas walk-on guard Brett Ballard. Whitlock's day usually begins at 4 a.m. and continues well into the evening. Photo by Jamie Roper/KANSAN
Continued from page 1A
"He's a star," said Bryan Truta, a co-host on his radio show, Jason Whitlock of Neighborhood. "People constantly want to shake his hand. He's a big-time celebration to them."
Jason goes beyond sports commentary to take hard stances on issues in society. In one column, he cited hip-hop music as a source of problems facing young black athletes. In another, he slammed the judicial system for giving the death penalty disproportionately to poor people and African Americans.
Mark Zieman, The Star's editor,
said The star hired Jian to reenergize readers with a different perspective on sports. But Zieman admits he never anticipated how far Jian would go. His style was a rude awakening for a city known for its historically reserved sports media.
"This has been a learning experience for both Jason and us because he's pushed the column in a direction we've never been before," Zieman said.
Jason accepts credit for changing things.
"I think I certainly went about things in a different way," he said. "And I think my survival, my flourishing doing things my way perhaps set an example for some other people to say. 'You know what, we can stand up to these guys and we won't get fired.'"
Jason also takes on local sports icons, such as Hall-of-Fame quarterback Joe Montana and Kansas City Chiefs general manager Carl Peterson.
The young Jason
Ten-year-old Jason Whitlock arrives home from school at his house in suburban Indianapolis at 3 in the afternoon.
His mother is still at work and his older brother, Jim, won't be home for more than an hour. As he does everyday, Jason heads for the kitchen, reaches into a drawer and removes a knife. Feeling safe, one hand tightly grasping the knife, he watches Dennis the Menace until Jim comes home.
Today, at age 33, Jason's fears still loom. Instead of wielding knives to ward off intruders, Jason fears failure and the thought of losing the things he's worked tirelessly to achieve.
"I'm scared," he said. "I'm scared that if I don't do well everything is going to get taken from me."
Jason, whose parents divorced when he was six, grew up in Indianapolis with his mother and brother.
He was a star offensive linemen for Warren Central High School, where he was captain during his senior season when the team, quarterbacked by current NFL player Jeff George, won a state championship.
A self-proclaimed class clown, Jason never took school seriously, spending most his time reading. His bedroom was lined from wall-to-wall with stacks of *Sports Illustrated* magazines, and he bragged of reading between 60 and 70 books each year.
During his senior season, Jason's mother followed her job with AT&T Corp. to Kansas City, so James moved from his母子's suburban home to live with his father, James, who had fallen on hard times. The two shared a modest one-bedroom apartment, alternating nights between the couch and the bed. It was the first time Jason experienced poverty.
"I'm so happy for that experience," Jason said. "Me and my dad got very close. We had no choice but to be close. We were on top of each other."
Jason earned a scholarship to play football at Ball State University, but lost favor with the coaches and was relegated to the bench.
New coaches hired during Jason's third year finally gave him an opportunity to play, but his passion for football had faded.
Dave Land, then an assistant coach at Ball State, said, "He was really a good football player. His weight got a bit out of control and that hindered him a little bit."
A budding journalist
Tendayl Kumbula, a journalism professor at Ball State, witnessed Jason's transition from dedicated athlete to dedicated journalist.
Jason's focus turned from athletics to academics his fifth year at Ball State. He quit the team and joined the staff at the student newspaper where he covered football.
Kumbula recalled, "The first time I had him in my class I thought he was going to be one of those athletes. I was surprised when I found out that he was serious about being a journalist."
After Jason's graduation in 1980, he covered high school sports part-time for the Bloomington Herald-Times in Indiana, earnest just $5 an hour. From there, he got a job at The Charlotte Observer where he stretched himself beyond sports and started writing about music.
"They let me do this big package on
the whole hip-hop culture," he said. "I did that and started getting some attention."
That attention landed Jason a job covering Michigan men's basketball for the Ann-Arbor News in 1992. It was there he started writing columns. Ironically, his first column called for the benching of Wolverine quarterback Elvis Grbac, whom would later criticize as quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs.
His opinionated columns gained a following in Ann Arbor, and after two years, he landed the job at *The Star* as a full-time sports columnist.
Jason had read The Star on trips to Kansas City and thought the sports section needed a change.
"The columnists weren't my cup of tea," he said. "I think a good journalist has great instincts and writes about the right topics and challenges people's thoughts."
His hard stances on tough issues are what first attracted WHB general manager Chad Boer to Jason.
Boger wanted to add a big-name personality to his AM Mayhem morning show so he hired Jason to co-host with him in May of 2000. After a few months, Boger relinquished his hosting duties, and in November, Jason Whitlock's Neighborhood was born.
A day with Jason
Jason's black Mercedes Benz rolls into WHB's parking lot at 5 a.m. He emerges wearing a black t-shirt featuring a picture of deceased rapper Notorious BIG and black and gray pajama pants. On his head is a hat that says, "Think Big."
The main topic in the next three hours centers around Jason's belief that the NCAA women's basketball tournament should be moved to avoid competing with the men's. Jason urges the women's tournament to remove its "mouth from the teat of the men's tournament."
At 6, Jason greets listeners with his own rendition of the theme song from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood as the show begins.
"People look at me and they see that I'm a sex symbol and they think that any woman I'm associated with obviously must be sleeping with me." Jason says with a mock serious look on his face. "It's something that I've dealt with my entire life. I've tried to keep these women at a professional distance, but they fight me and fight me. There's more to me than just my beautiful body."
After the show, he and Truta drive to Jason's real neighborhood — his $300,000 Overland Park home — where Megan Maciejowski, the *Neighborhood*的最新 on-air personality, arrives. The three pile into her Honda for a trip to Lawrence for a press conference with Kansas basketball coach Roy Williams.
After the press conference, the trio drives back to Overland Park to eat dinner at one of Jason's favorite haunts, Gates Barbecue. On the way, Jason and Megan discuss rumors of their romantic involvement.
At Gates, Jason orders his usual: a
short end of ribs without sauce and
side of beans and potato salad.
"Gates Barbecue is the king of barbecue with my dad a close second," he declares.
Jason occasionally reaches across the table to snatch fries and ribs from his co-workers' plates, something Megan complained was a common occurrence.
After Gates, Megan and Truta drive Jason back to his home. Jason exits the car and starts toward his house. Suddenly, he stops, taps on the car and motions for Megan to roll down her window.
"Ive got a secret to tell you," he says.
When Megan obliges, Jason thrusts his ample buttocks through the window, relieves himself of a noisy stream of gas, then walks to his house with a look of satisfaction on his face. Megan, once again Jason's victim, flims him on and drives away.
"Farting is very important to me." Jason explains. "It's huge part of my life. I've built my entire life around my living."
Inside, after a 13-hour day, Jason sits down to write his column before going to bed.
A full plate
Juggling responsibilities between the *Star* and the radio station creates problems. The *Neighborhood* requires Jason to crawl out of bed at 4 each morning, no small feat considering the games he covers can last until 11 p.m., and then he still has to write a column for the next day's paper.
Combining newspaper and radio also puts a clamp on his private life. Jason said he recently ended a relationship with a woman he loved because staying together required too much work.
"It has been a problem, and I've talked to Jason about it," Zieman said. "Even though he does a morning show for a radio station, he's still a Star employee."
And at times, the raw shock-jock atmosphere of talk radio clashes with the more civilized tone of newspaper journalism.
Zieman expressed concern about the time commitment required by the radio show, but Jason insists that his column is "my foundation and that's always the most important."
While he may not be ready for marriage, Jason found time to be a surrogate father. In 1998, his cousin, Josh, came from Indianapolis to live with him.
Josh, then 14, was experiencing problems at home and school. His father was not around and his mother was battling chemical dependency. Jason said he took Josh in and helped to make him a better person.
All he needed was some direction from a male figure and someone to show some interest in him," Jason said.
After two years, Jason said Josh moved back to Indianapolis and fell back into some of the same problems.
His mother, Joyce, said even as a child Jason liked to help people in need.
Jason explained, "A bunch of money isn't great unless you share it with other people, unless you share your blessings with other people."
"It's heartbreaking," Jason said. "It kills me."
Just how much money Jason has to share remains a mystery. His Mercedes and roomy Overland Park house suggest prosperity. But Jason said only that he would not deny making more than $200,000 a year from The Star.
His current challenge is conquering obesity. Although Gates Barbecue remains a favorite stop, Jason claimed progress in the past seven months, losing between 40 and 50 pounds.
By his own admission immature at times, Jason has suffered from several lapses in judgment. One led to his suspension from The Star in 1998.
The incident occurred during a Kansas City Chiefs-New England Patriots football game in Foxboro, Mass. Patriots fans, aware of where the opposing team's media sat during games, taunted Jason and other Kansas City journalists. Jason responded by making signs and holding them against the press box window for fans to see. One of the signs, the one that led to his suspension, read "Pats suck. Bledsoe Gay"
The immature, playful Jason
Editors at The Star learned of the incident and suspended Jason indefinitely.
Jason's ride in Kansas City has nit a few bumps.
Star editor Zieman said, "That was
clearly a mistake in judgment, a severe one. He did admit to the paper that he made a mistake that reflected very poorly on him and very poorly on The Star."
Two weeks later The Star reinstated Jason and his column resumed, but there have been other conflicts along the way.
During his first year with The Star, KMBZ's Don Fortune attacked Jason during his afternoon radio show. In his column, Jason had called for a boycott of the Kansas City Royals' home opener because the Royals had yet to give fans any special offers to make up for the strike, which had just ended.
When the Royals announced concessions, Jason called off the boycott. Fortune, upset by his antics, told listeners that Jake knew the Royals were planning to make concessions prior to initiating the boycott.
Toretaleil, Jason phoned the show and hurled insults at Fortune on the air, something Jason credits to his own personal lapse in judgment.
Jason also made an enemy of the Chiefs great running back Marcus Allen. In one of his columns, Jason depicted a fictional phone call from jail between then-double murder suspect OJ Simpson and Allen.
The column infuributed Allen and his wife, and Jason later apologized. It's the one column Jason wishes he had never written.
"The column was hilarious, but it was inappropriate and it was unfair to Marcus Allen," he admits.
Despitessetbacks.Jason'sstockcon
Arising star
tinues to rise. Last year, he was given a recurring spot on ESPN's The Sports Reporters, a program where Dick Schaap and other prominent journalists debate sports issues.
Jason is gunning for more national exposure.
"My goal since getting into this is I want to be known as the premier sports columnist, premier sports journalist personality in the country," Jason said. "I don't think I'm there vet."
Jason doesn't think his quest will take him out of Kansas City. For now, he is content with The Star and the radio show, though he wishes more people could know the real Jason. He compares his image to that of Muhammad Ali. Jason said people often got the wrong impression of the real Ali and the real Jason.
"Sometimes he can be hysterically immature," Jason said of Ali. "Sometimes he can be really, really thoughtful. Sometimes people loved him to death. Sometimes people feared him. He was terribly misunderstood and he likes to take stances and I like to take stances."
Like Ali, Jason wants to be remembered as "the greatest" and as a voice for others.
I consider myself a voice for Jason and part of being Jason is I am an African American," he said. "I'm a voice for overweight people. I'm a voice for outspoken people. I'm a voice for opinionated people. I'm a voice for guys who used to play sports. Whatever I am, I am a voice for all that."
Edited by Joshua Richards
Whitlock talks with fellow reporter Dick Schaap. Whitlock has made several appearances on ESPN's The Sports Reporters, which Schaap hosts. The two recently got a chance to chat at Jet Lag Lounge, 610 Florida St., when Schaap was in Lawrence for a book signing. Photo by Jamie Roper/KANSAN
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