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Woody Paige

Born:	June 27, 1946 (age 60) Memphis, Tennessee
Occupation:	Sports columnist The Denver Post

Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Paige, Jr. (born June 27, 1946 in Memphis, Tennessee) is a sports columnist for The Denver Post and is also a regular panelist on the ESPN sports talk program Around the Horn. He was co-host of Cold Pizza and its spin-off show 1st and 10 until on Nov. 4, 2006, it was announced that Paige would return to the Post, beginning Dec. 1. He will write four columns a week for the paper.[1]

Contents 1 Schooling and Early Career 2 Around The Horn 3 Cold Pizza 4 Miscellaneous information 5 References 6 External links

Paige attended the University of Tennessee. He joined Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity in 1964. After leaving UT, he began his career with the Whitehaven Press in 1963, and went on to write for the Knoxville Journal, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and the Rocky Mountain News. He joined the Denver Post in 1981.

Paige is arguably Around The Horn's most popular panelist. On the show, he has friendly, bantering relationship in particular with Jay Mariotti of the Chicago Sun-Times and plays the role of the rube. Paige and Mariotti had a real feud in the early '90s^{[citation needed]} when Mariotti was working for the Rocky Mountain News, which is the Denver Post's main rival. However, the two seem to have resolved their differences. The two have "won" (the show's host, Tony Reali dispenses points for intelligent or insightful comments and a running tally is kept) the most episodes of the show. However, this is offset by the fact that both appear much more than any other participant (others include Michael Smith, Bob Ryan, Michael Holley and Jackie McMullan of the Boston Globe, J.A. Adande and Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times,Tim Cowlishaw of the Dallas Morning News and the currently unemployed Kevin Blackistone). Mariotti and Paige appear nearly every day, with one of them appearing every single day.

Paige is well-known for his goofy opening jokes (he has appeared with a talking toy parrot, a blow-up doll, a mariachi guitar player, and others in his opening segments), and from the summer of 2004 up until his return to the Denver Post in November 2006 he had a blackboard behind him on which were written various, typically ridiculous mocking comments about Reali or Mariotti, knowing little to nothing about professional sports (i.e picking Michael Vick as the NFL MVP), or absurdly self-aggrandizing comments. The blackboard left for a while but was back on the show as of December 11, 2006.^{[citation needed]}

Paige also has several catchphrases - such as "Why do I always have to straighten you guys out?" and "LOOK AT THE SCHEDULE!" - which he uses to add emotion and humor to the show. Paige also will scream "WHAT?!?!" in a sarcastic manner, seemingly to get attention, or purposefully get muted, during the show when he pretends to be mocked or disagreed with. He is also famous for his frequent and various malapropisms and mispronunciations of various words on the show. Examples of this include his referring to Zinedine Zidane as "Cezanne," Marco Materazzi as "Maserati," Leandro Barbosa as "Leandro Barbarossa", Trinidad and Tobago as "Trinidad and Toboggan", the Seibu Lions as Saboo, Troy Polamalu as "Troy Palamulu", and Mariano Rivera as "Mario Rivera."^{[citation needed]}

In July 2004, Paige announced that he was taking a one year leave from the Post to join ESPN2's Cold Pizza. On the show, he was featured in the 1st and 10 segment, where he lightheartedly debated the man Skip Bayless on 10 sports-related topics.

In his farewell appearance on Cold Pizza, which aired November 28, 2006, Paige cited declining health in his family as a reason for leaving the show and for leaving New York City to return to Denver.^[1]

• His work has appeared in numerous sports magazines^{[citation needed]} and he is also the author of two books about sports ^[2].
• One of the most famous brouhahas, and one where Paige was right, occurred in July 2001. Paige reported in a column for his newspaper that an employee at Invesco, which had the naming rights to the Denver Broncos stadium, Invesco Field at Mile High, claimed that the nickname for the stadium in company shorthand was "The Diaphragm", after its shape. After the CEO of the company threatened Paige and the Post with legal action over supposedly libelous allegations, he had to retract his claims when it was discovered that the employees were telling the truth. ^[3]
• Paige is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Selection Committee and is a Baseball Hall of Fame and ESPY Awards voter.
• Suffers from diabetes.^{[citation needed]}

1. ^ Video of Paige's Cold Pizza farewell. Accessed December 5, 2006.
2. ^ Search results (matching titles). Retrieved on 2007-03-11.
3. ^ Greedy, Stupid, and Blind (2002-03-01). Retrieved on 2007-03-18.

• Biography from ESPN.com
• Article "ESPN's Unlikely Star"
• PR Week interview with Woody
• Some of The Woodster's more infamous columns