Life of Fitz | A Cancer Warrior's Conversations about Life

Dennis Dodd has covered college football for CBS Sports since it was CBS SportsLine in 1998. Prior to that, Dodd worked alongside Fitz publishing college sports magazines for Kansas State, Missouri and Kansas. In 1998, they both sought a different direction, with Fitz and his wife, Becky, establishing Spirit Street Publishing (the publishing company behind GoPowercat.com and formerly Powercat Illu...

John Kurtz went directly from being a Kansas State student to joining the media covering Kansas State athletics as a member of the KMAN 1350-AM sports staff, covering K-State and Manhattan area sports. John eventually moved up to sports director and established himself as one of the leading voices in the K-State sports media. Everyone recognized John's talent and knew he would move on, but after 1...

A Lenexa native who grew up watching channel 5, Marleah Campbell has been with KCTV5 since the summer of 2022. She returned to her hometown after starting her TV career at WIBW, the CBS affiliate in Topeka, where she served as sports director, where she and Fitz quickly became friends. Prior to that, Marleah played Division I basketball at the University of Wyoming. A four-time Academic All-Mounta...

Earlier this summer, the K-State Alumni Association board of directors named Adam Walker, Ed. D., ’04, ’09 as the Association’s next president and CEO. Walker began his duties on July 24. In this role, Walker is responsible for the overall management and strategic planning of the Alumni Association. Walker is the staff liaison for the Association’s board of directors and serves as secretary of the...

Mike Clark, former Kansas State baseball coach, retired from his duties in the K-State athletics department at the end of June. Clark coached K-State baseball from 1986 until 2003, winning 432 games for a program that was barely funded. For 16 of Clark’s 17 seasons, K-State baseball only had a field. Tointon Stadium was built prior to his final season, but for those first 16, there was no stadium,...

Fitz needed to book a guest on short notice so he pulled the card out of his back pocket he's been saving and called his sister, Amy. Amy Fitzgerald is a Kansas State graduate with both her undergrad and master's in industrial engineering. She eventually decided that she wanted to get into medicine, and instead of heading to medical school at age 29, she went to physician assistant school at Wichi...

Award-winning anchor and reporter Jeff Vaughn serves as an evening news anchor KCBS and KCAL in Los Angeles since November 2015. Vaughn joined KCAL/KCBS news team after serving as an anchor at WXYZ-TV, the ABC affiliate in Detroit, since January 2013. A four-time Emmy winner, he won a California Emmy for anchoring Wildfire Relief in 2017, a Michigan Emmy in 2013 for anchoring breaking news, a Texa...

Josh Eilert grew up in Osborne, Kansas, and then played basketball at Cloud County Community College and Kansas State. When Bob Huggins came to K-State in 2006, Eilert was ready to head into his second year as a graduate assistant coach for the program. Huggins kept Eilert on, and when he left K-State after one season to head home to West Virginia, his alma mater, Eilert went him. After 16 seasons...

Pat Bosco, a native of Syracuse, N.Y., came to Kansas State as a student, became student body president a few years later, and after graduation began to work for K-State. He served the university until his retirement in 2019, working under five university Presidents in a career that culminated in the titles of Vice President for Student Life and Dean of Students. In 2004, the Student Governing Ass...

Coach Jerome Tang promised to elevate the Kansas State basketball program when he was hired and he certainly kept that promise in his first season. Picked for last in the Big 12 Conference, Tang's Wildcats' competed for the conference title and then ended the season with a run to the NCAA Tournament's Elite Eight, losing to Florida Atlantic one step short of the Final Four. It was remarkable for T...

Coach Bill Snyder doesn't really need much of an introduction. After all, he was the engineer of the greatest turnaround in college football history and is now part of the College Football Hall of Fame. Coach Sndyer arrived in Manhattan in 1988 after serving as the offensive coordinator under another legend, Hayden Fry, at Iowa. His long career, separated by a failed three-year retirement in the m...

Chris Klieman arrived at Kansas State in December of 2018 after winning four national titles in his five seasons at FCS-level North Dakota State. The athletics director who hired him at NDSU was Gene Taylor, who in the spring of 2017 became the new AD at K-State. Taylor went through the search process and kept coming back to Klieman, not just as a coach who would win football games in the Big 12,...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling Kansas State's Director of Athletics, Gene Taylor.   Taylor was named the Director of Athletics at K-State in April 2017. During his tenure K-State has seen the football program qualify for three bowls, the men’s basketball team win a Big 12 Championship, earn an Elite 8 appearance and advance to two NCAA tournaments and...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling former Kansas State punter Nick Walsh, who wrapped up his playing career in 2017. Four years ago, Walsh left his family home in Lyndon, Kansas, and headed to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a career in songwriting. Since then, Walsh has built an impressive catalog of songs that he performed and has written with some of t...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling Adam Stanco, the new boss at the 247Sports Network. Stanco's official title lists him as a vice-president of content & executive producer for 247Sports. He moved to Nashville from San Francisco, where he spent years as an executive with the Pac-12 Network. Stanco started his TV career at WIBW-13 in Topeka, but quickl...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling former Kansas State basketball coach Jim Wooldridge in Dallas, Texas, where he and his wife, Anne, recently moved. Wooldridge coached the Wildcats from 2000 until being let go by athletics director Tim Weiser after losing in the Big 12 Tournament to end the 2005-06 season. Wooly was born in Oklahoma City and played baske...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling his new friend and media colleague David Smoak in Waco, Texas. "Smoaky," as he's known in Texas, has been honored as a TV reporter and anchor, and radio play-by-play broadcaster by the Associated Press. He is now part of the staff of SicEm365, a Baylor website, hosting their three-hour weekday radio show that also live-s...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling his friend and media colleague Taylor Estes in Round Rock, Texas. Taylor has helped cover University of Texas athletics as a video and audio producer for sites on the Rivals, Scout and now 247Sports Network as a Texas staff writer, managing editor of Horns247, and co-host of The Flagship Podcast with her longtime colleag...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling his friend and media colleague Bruce Haertl in Denver Colorado. Haertl is a living legend in Kansas media. He is a 33-year veteran in the sports television industry, spending most of his career in Wichita at KWCH after getting into the world of sports media at KFH-Wichita. Haertl landed Denver’s FOX31 and Channel 2 in Ma...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling his friend and former media colleague Dani Welniak in Kansas City. Welniak is a graduate of the Oklahoma State sports journalism program who started her news career in Dodge City, Kansas, covering high school sports for Catch It Kansas. After two years, she moved up to Wichita’s main station, KWCH 12, before moving to Ka...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling former Kansas State quarterback Brian Kavanagh, who played for the Wildcats in Fitz's first days of covering Kansas State athletics full-time. Kavanagh came to K-State in 1991 from Naperville, Ill., to play for Coach Bill Snyder, and he is believed to be the first college football player to use an NCAA rule loophole that...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald speaking with Kansas State associate head football coach Van Malone about his life, hopes for the upcoming season, his philosophies on coaching and lift, his own podcast "Leaders Lead & Winners Win," which he also launched in 2020 during the pandemic, his recent TedX Talk and his ongoing journey to becoming a head coach. Mal...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling his friend Marty Miller, brother of former Kansas State quarterback and assistant coach, Matt Miller. On January 8, 2022, Matthew Lee Miller died peacefully at the age of 49 at the Kansas University Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas, after an 18-month battle against prostate cancer. Matt Miller was a guest on last se...

This special edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling former Kansas State and NFL receiver Jordy Nelson. After 10 seasons with the Green Bay Packers and one with the Oakland Raiders, Nelson retired from the NFL following the 2019 season, returning to Kansas with his wife and two sons to help tend the family farm in Riley County, Kansas. The K-State Ring of Honor mem...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling his friend Kelly Stewart in Las Vegas. Kelly was the first person Fitz called when this podcast debuted in March of 2020 and now he ends his second season of Life of Fitz by making Kelly his first and 50th guest to appear. Kelly is a Kansas State graduate who rose to fame as an oddsmaker and sports gambling analyst in a...