As a sports media columnist, Neil Best is part of a dying breed. Best covers the beat for Newsday and is one of the few journalists who cover the beat full-time for a newspaper.

Best worked the high school, college basketball and pro football beats, covering the New York Giants, for Newsday before he started reporting on the sports media landscape.

His SportsWatch column debuted on Sept. 30, 2005, after he spent two decades at the Long Island paper. In 2008, Best landed the biggest scoop of his career when he broke the story that Mike Francesa and Chris “Mad Dog” Russo were considering breaking up the most successful sports radio show in New York, “Mike and the Mad Dog.”

Matt Castello: Before you came back to work in New York, you spent two years working in Alaska. What was your time in Alaska like?

NB: It was cool – figuratively and literally! They used to say that the best thing about Anchorage is that it's only a 20 minute drive from Alaska, meaning that Anchorage itself is a pretty normal medium-sized city . . . but the world all around it certainly isn't. One cool thing was that I was with a bunch of other early 20s types who grew up elsewhere, so we were all in it together.

Neil Best Talks Super Bowl, Sports Hot Topics

MC: What do you think of a New York Super Bowl? Good idea, bad idea?

NB: I think it's a very good idea. As incredibly popular as the Super Bowl obviously is, to me the brand is getting a little stale. This shakes it up in a new way.

MC: Dan LeBatard gave his baseball Hall of Fame (HOF) vote to Deadspin readers. What did you think of his logic?

NB: I applaud the statement he was trying to make about the silliness of the voting system. Among other problems it shares a flaw with the Heisman vote in that there are way too many voters who are eligible. Having said that . . . I might not have gone about it the way he did. Having fans weigh in on his vote would have been a more PC way to go about it.

MC: Why isn't Jason Collins on an NBA team?

NB: Not sure. I think it's mostly because he is an old, fringe player. But it's impossible to know whether his famous announcement has impacted his marketability. Let's put it this way: I think if LeBron announced he is gay, he'd have no trouble whatsoever finding an NBA job.

Neil Best Reflects On Career So Far

MC: What was your all-time favorite interview you conducted?

NB: Hmm. I've talked to pretty much every major athlete of the past 40 years, but . . . I'm going to say it was the time I talked to Monty Hall about his days as a Rangers radio analyst in the late 1950s! It turned out he worked the game at the Garden when Jacques Plante introduced the goalie mask to the NHL. Second place: once interviewed the San Diego Chicken before a Fairbanks Goldpanners game after a controversy involving the Anchorage Glacier Pilots jacking up their prices for a game he appeared at. Also once interviewed the Phillie Phanatic.

MC: Who's your favorite athlete, coach or announcer to interview?

NB: Michael Strahan . . . when he is in a good mood.

MC: Least favorite?

NB: Hmm. Well, Willie Mays was extremely unpleasant when I talked to him in Anchorage in 1983, an experience I share with many others who have talked to him over the years.

MC: What is life like as a sports media columnist?

NB: Life as a sports media columnist is very good.

MC: What is the most memorable story you've written? Piece that you're most proud of?

NB: Well, my biggest scoop certainly was the one in 2008 about the impending end of the "Mike and the Mad Dog" show. That was a very nervous summer, because the original story was not confirmed for two months.

MC: If you could interview one athlete that you haven't had the chance to, who's your pick – dead or alive?

NB: There aren't too many left who are alive who I'd like to interview but haven't. Maybe Wayne Gretzky. But the dead category opens all sorts of possibilities, obviously. I guess I'd say Babe Ruth, but that doesn't seem very creative. I'll say Christy Mathewson.

MC: Who do you enjoy reading?

NB: Hmm. Tim Layden.

MC: Favorite sports movie? Favorite sports book? Favorite author?

NB: Hmm. I suppose "Field of Dreams." Book: "The Game," by Ken Dryden. Author: Kurt Vonnegut.

MC: What do you think of the current state of journalism?

NB: There are problems with it, but there always have been problems. There is good stuff and bad stuff. But I can't deny that social media has had more of a negative effect than a positive one. There is way too much pressure to be fast rather than right.

MC: What is your greatest athletic achievement?

NB: Hmm. Baseball/softball is the only sport at which I am better than average, but my most glorious moment was catching the winning touchdown pass in overtime against Alpha Zeta in the intramural touch football playoffs on Oct. 8, 1981, in four inches of mud on Upper Jessup Field.

MC: What is the meanest thing someone has written to you online? Have you ever gotten threats after writing something?

NB: Wow! I mostly laugh at or ignore that stuff, even though my daughters are horrified by it. I really don't know. I have taken less crap than most writers, I suppose, and I certainly never take any of it personally. No, I never have been threatened.

MC: Lowest moment of your professional career?

NB: I had a nice scoop in January of 1984 when I learned that the highly ranked University of Anchorage-Alaska hockey team would not be able to host a Division II playoff game for reasons I now forget. Later that day, my rival beat writer at the Anchorage Daily News called the NCAA to follow up on me kicking his ass once again, and the guy there asked him why he cared because UAA was not eligible for the tournament at all. Huh? Turns out because they did not have enough people on their swimming team they did not technically have enough intercollegiate programs to be eligible as a Division II institution and thus their hockey team could not play in the tournament. I would handle something like that maturely now, as a middle-aged person with perspective, but at the time I was devastated both by the other paper's scoop and also personally because I was an impressionable 22-year-old and was friends with many of the players, who were around my age. I was so distraught my editor had to write the follow-up news story. The next day I left with the team on a road trip to Northern Arizona and USIU in San Diego. Sigh…

MC: What advice do you have for young journalists and writers trying to break into the business?

NB: Be talented, and work hard. Having either one without the other ain't gonna work.

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