GAINESVILLE, Fla.– The UAA communications department has a weekly staff meeting on Monday mornings. Agenda items are usually routine, but today we talked about something different; something no one wanted to talk about.
The best way to honor Martin Fennelly, the longtime Tampa Bay area sports columnist who died Friday while visiting family in Connecticutat the age of 65.
The news Sunday was a gut-punch to fellow senior writer Scott Carter and me, both of us having worked for years alongside one of the most talented, intelligent, hilarious and loyal people we'd ever been fortunate enough to call a friend.
I don't cry often, but I did this morning … Martin meant so much to so many who called the Tampa Tribune home at one time … RIP my friend. https://t.co/WOWkzjmQ4Q
— Scott Carter (@GatorsScott) January 28, 2024
But Martin's gifts were also his columns.
He was a wordsmith equally adept at making you laugh or cry. Martin delighted readers atThe Sarasota Herald-Tribune,Tampa TribuneandTampa Bay Timesfor nearly three decades, with a heaping helping of Florida Gators prose along the way.Timescolumnist John Romano wrote a lovely tribute to his former colleague that highlighted some of Martin's most memorable passages.
I have
countless memories of him during our time chronicling the Gators. Take Jan. 3, 1996. About 12 hours earlier Florida had been annihilated by Nebraska 62-24 in the Fiesta Bowl. Martin and I were there for the Tribune and in his post-game news conference Steve Spurrier was as candid as he was critical about his team's performance in the program's first national-championship game. We wrote about it that night, but Martin wanted more. He wanted the raw, next-day candid Head Ball Coach.
So he and I went to the team hotel at 8 a.m. and hung around until we found longtime UF communications director Norm Carlson and asked to see Spurrier for some follow-up. We were told to wait in the the lobby. Sure enough, there came Spurrier down a fancy spiral staircase. He stopped in his tracks when he saw it was just Martin andme sitting on a couch.
"The ol' aftermath story … and just two media boys, eh?" Spurrier said. "OK, then."
And, yes, Martin wrote a great "aftermath" story.
His passing made me think of other stories that would resonate with Gator Nation.
Friday, Jan. 3, 1997
(from a somewhat important game in New Orleans):
So Florida crushed Florida State in the rematch. This time it was the Florida State defense under Danny Wuerffel, not the other way around. For 306 yards and three touchdown passes. He brought the Seminoles to their knees, and not to pray.
But you knew there was respect.
Danny Wuerffel does that to people. He inspires with his abilities, his calm, his thoughtfulness. It can make a Nole believe in a Gator. And it can make Steve Spurrier give in.
Yes, Steve Spurrier gave in.
The head coach handed Wuerffel a shotgun Thursday night and told him to let it rip. Spurrier has never loved the shotgun – he didn't invent it. But he knew he could win this game. Moreover, he knew he could not stand to lose it. It would have been too much, another national title gone, and to Florida State.
Saturday, April 2, 1994
(A 3,000-word piece on two Gators from opposite sides of Pinellas County, Andrew DeClercq and Dametri Hill, heading to the Final Four):
Two kids born 11 months apart. Two roads, one through the suburbs, one through the city streets. One filled with family roller skating outings, with apple picking and the world for the taking, and the other filled with a mother who was in and out and a neighborhood that was there 24 hours a day. One from south Pinellas County, one from north Pinellas County. High school opponents and AAU teammates. A bony forward, a self-described "tall, gangly, goofy, white boy." A wide center, who grew up so fast that too many people – dumb people – figured that anybody that big, that black, had to be bad.
Two kids, two roads, on a highway to Charlotte.
"We're both having success; we just came from opposite ends to get here," says Hill, the sophom*ore center. "When we went to play his high school … Countryside High, that was rich, they had those soft, white boys, Then they beat us in regionals, and [Andrew] was very tough. I knew he could play."
"I didn't know much about Dixie Hollins," says DeClercq, the junior forward. "We just figured that was down south, and it was tough down there. When I got to know Dametri, I found a lot out about him. … I think I appreciate how far he's come. We both have a hunger."
Sunday, Nov. 30, 2009
(About a certain UF quarterback)
The flashbulbs.
This was more an event than a football game, and the final score said so, though not as much as the pop, pop, pops that lit Florida Field.
It was like that here on a September evening in 2006 as a freshman from Jacksonville took the field as a Florida Gator for the first time, off the bench in a win against Southern Mississippi.
Flashbulbs, thousands of them.
Saturday night, in the fourth quarter of another blowout over poor Bobby Bowden and poorer Florida State, there they were again.
Flashbulbs, thousands of them.
Everyone wanted a piece of Tim Tebow's last drive as a Gator in the Swamp, his last touchdown in Gainesville.
I bet most of the pictures came out awful. People were so far away. But in many ways, they've never felt closer to anyone in Florida history.
Tebow scored, of course, a short run. He went in standing up. Standing alone.
Flashbulbs, thousands of them.
During our meeting, I turned to Mary Howard, senior associate AD who has overseen the Florida the women's communication side for going on 40 years. I asked how often she'd dealt with Martin.
She said this: "He wrote the best story about the 1998 soccer national championship."
And he wasn't even there.
Martin, you see, just loved good stories and loved them even more when they had a local hook. No other big-city columnist in the state – not in Orlando, Jacksonville, St. Pete or certainly any South Florida hub – would have stepped out of their NFL, NBA and college football comfort cocoons in early December to write about women's soccer.
But Martin was different. Martin was egoless. Martin was fabulous. Martin was a master storyteller.
Rest in peace, old friend.
And enjoy this one, Florida fans, from Dec. 9, 1998.
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Talk about yourself, your interests, and why you're qualified: Introduce yourself at the beginning of the speech and explain why you are an authority on the given subject. You can mention your past successes, educational background, and personal investment in the topic .
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