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

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling Ryan Abraham, publisher of USCfootball.com on the 247Sports Network. Abraham has always offered a truly multimedia experience in one of the nation’s largest media markets. And the quality and quantity of his work helped Abraham’s site stand out, even in the Los Angeles market. From being one of the first to enter the pod...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling former Kansas State tight end Thomas Hill in the Phoenix area. Hill came out of Nathan Hale High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as a 6-foot-4, 240-pound tight end who was filled with athletic talent and was short on actual playing experience. Still, Hill earned a scholarship offer from Kansas State coach Bill Snyder after hi...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling former Kansas State strong safety Maurice Mack in Houston. Maurice was the running back who followed Darren Sproles at Olathe North High School in Kansas City and there was no drop off in production at the position. He then followed Sproles to Kansas State, but he switched to the defensive side of the ball, donning the N...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling his longtime friend Dana Dimel in El Paso, Texas. Fitz covered Dimel in the 1984 and '85 seasons when Dimel was an offensive lineman and Fitz was a student journalist. Dimel transitioned into coaching and Fitzgerald began covering Kansas State football on a full-time basis in 1995, overlapping for two seasons with Dimel...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling his sports writing colleague Vahe Gregorian in Kansas City, Missouri. Gregorian earned respect as one of the great college beat writers in the Midwest after covering the Big Eight and Big 12 during 25 years at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, but in 2013 he joined the Kansas City Star as a sports columnist. Vahe now covers t...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling his good friend Dr. Dan Kuester across town in Manhattan. Kuester grew up in southern Missouri, attended Drury College in Springfield and then earned both his master’s and Ph. D. in economics from the University of Missouri. After teaching at the University of Arkansas for four years, he arrived in Manhattan in the fall...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, Jaime Mendez, a former Kansas State safety who arrived in Manhattan in 1989 and started for the Wildcats from 1990-93. By his senior year, Mendez was a consensus All-American who started every game of his four-year career, culminating in the 1993 Copper Bowl, just the school’s second bowl game and first bowl victory...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, Sam Mellinger, one of the sports columnists for the Kansas City Star, who has carried on the Star’s rich history of talented sports columnists. Sam graduated from the University of Kansas in 2000, and went to work at the Star and began climbing the career ladder. Sam has been a sports columnist at the Star since 201...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, Vic Lombardi, a veteran television and radio host who previously worked in South Bend, Austin, Phoenix and most recently the sports anchor for Denver CBS4. For the last four years, Lombardi has covered professional sports in Denver for Altitude Sports. With 25 years of experience in the sports industry, Vic is a 32-...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, Lisa Horne, an experienced sports journalist based in Southern California. She’s worked for entities such as Bleacher Report, The Sporting News and Fox Sports covering topics as varied as college football and NASCAR. She now spends her time covering Southern California football, a school that is also her alma mater....

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, Brad Underwood, who is the head basketball coach at the University of Illinois. Underwood grew up in McPherson, Kansas, just south of Fitz's hometown of Salina, and both graduated high school in 1982. They have known each for much of their lives, but 20 years after playing at Kansas State, Underwood returned in 2006...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, Nick Leckey, whose final year of football at Kansas State came during the Wildcats’ 2003 Big 12 Championship season and then in the 2004 NFL Draft, the offensive lineman was selected in the sixth round by the Arizona Cardinals. Leckey played six seasons in the NFL mostly as a center, ending his career as part of the...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, Andrew Smith, a Kansas State University, who as the coronavirus swept the globe, found himself with his wife, two daughters and seven students in London. As he prepared to return he wasn’t feeling well, but the tell-tale symptoms of COVID-19 didn’t settle in until he arrived home in Manhattan. Smith, however, is mor...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, Sean Lowe, a former Kansas State football player who found love on The Bachelor. Lowe was originally cast as one of the men on the eighth season of The Bachelorette, but a few months later Lowe returned for the 17th season of The Bachelor, and at the center of attention of a houseful of women who were hoping to beco...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, Greg Sharpe who now serves as the radio play-by-play announcer for University of Nebraska football and baseball games. Sharpe, though, served as the Voice of the Wildcats for Kansas State football, calling games between 1996 and 2002, During that seven-year stretch, K-State averaged 10 wins a season as K-State footb...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, Johnny Kane, who now works for Fox Sports Detroit. Kane spent nearly nine years working first in the Topeka and then the Kansas City markets before he moved to Detroit, which is much closer to his home on northwestern Ohio. Kane does play-by-play, reports and anchors coverage of Detroit’s professional sports franchi...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, Michael Bishop, the runner-up for the 1998 Heisman Trophy. After Coach Bill Snyder took over the program in 1989, the historically downtrodden Wildcats began to improve. When Bishop arrived from Blinn College in 1997, he came as part of a historic junior college recruiting class that would elevate Snyder’s program a...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls fellow site publisher Gabe DeArmond of PowerMizzou.com. Fitz and Gabe always viewed their sites as news outlets that practice journalism, which for many years was not how sites in their industry were viewed by outsiders. The customers are fans, but they're not at games to be fans. Their sites cover recruiting, but they are much...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, Ben Leber, a former NFL linebacker and currently an analyst for Fox Sports. Leber was a star running back coming out of high school in Vermillion, South Dakota, but when he came to Kansas State in 1997, he switched to linebacker. It was a very good decision. Leber went on to become a two-time All-Big 12 linebacker,...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, Jenni Carlson, a columnist for The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City. Carlson was part of a national story when back in 2007 when Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy took exception to a story in the Oklahoma City newspaper. On the receiving end of Gundy’s "I’m a man, I’m 40" tirade was Jenni Carlson, one of the kindest, most p...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, Chip Brown, a sportswriter and radio host in Austin, Texas. Brown, a heavy hitter in one of college sports' most-important markets, and Fitz became friends through the industry and now both are part of the 247Sports Network. The two share common backgrounds and an interest in past and possible future conference real...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, Mick Shaffer, sports director at KSHB-41, the NBC affiliate in Kansas City. Fitz isn't sure when exactly the two became friends but they bonded one summer at a Big 12 football media event in Dallas, eventually breaking greasy bread that night at a Whataburger. The two share a sarcastic sense of humor as you will qui...

On this episode of the Life of Fitz podcast, host Tim Fitzgerald calls his friend, former Kansas State basketball coach Frank Martin. Martin seemed ready for a long stay in Manhattan until a new university president hired John Currie to be athletics director. A toxic relationship between Currie and Martin drove Martin after a loss in the Round of 32 of the 2012 NCAA Tournament to become the head c...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling his colleague Tom Keegan in Boston. Tom is now the sports columnist at the Boston Herald, but he and Fitz go back to not long after he was named sports editor of the Lawrence Journal-World, where he covered the University of Kansas. The Lawrence cable channel wanted to launch of new locally-driven sports talk show called...

This edition of the Life of Fitz podcast features host Tim Fitzgerald calling his good friend Kelly Stewart in Las Vegas. If you’re not familiar with Kelly, who is best known by her social media moniker KellyinVegas, she’s a respected sports handicapper who now works for WagerTalk.com among others. Her resume includes her own podcast, the Kelly and Murray Show. Her area of expertise is football be...