Greensboro Sports

Posted By Bruce on October 21, 2008

By Bruce Bullington
Senior Columnist

The 1992 News 2 Sports team (Sam Crenshaw, Mike Hogewood and Rob Goodman)

It’s always fun moving. Sure, you’re going to lose some stuff, but you also get to come across things you haven’t seen in years.

This is the experience I’ve been having the last several weeks. I keep coming across old newspapers, ticket stubs and, this week, I came across an old Greensboro Monarchs program from 1992-93.

I was thumbing past old ads for long-gone businesses (Jefferson-Pilot, Cellular One) and some that are still going strong 15 years later (IPD Eatery, Greensboro Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center) and I came across this motley crew.

Before WFMY imported anchors from the Midwest to come in and pretend to know the names of local teams, players and locations, we had a local boy doing the same thing. The pride and joy of Grimsley High School, Mike Hogewood (center) was the lead sports anchor at WFMY. In this advertisement he is pictured with Sam Crenshaw and Rob Goodman.

I started to wonder what happened to these guys, these staples of local TV news back in the day when we had little choice but to put up with WFMY’s open cheerleading for UNC and the Washington Redskins. I thought it would be really neat to see where these guys are now.

Then I realized that would be a lot of actual work. That’s when I decided to make up what happened to them. Hey, it’s better than copy-and-pasting entire press releases and web articles and passing it off as your own work.

Sam Crenshaw: Of course, we all know Sam went on to bigger and better things. Crenshaw had some big shoes to fill when James Brown left the Fox NFL Sunday pregame show, but Sam has stepped right in and is now a staple on Sundays with Howie, Terry and Jimmy.

Rob Goodman: Burned out on life in the limelight, Goodman went to California to work behind the camera and is now a famous producer of game shows. You hear his name every weekday at the end of the Price is Right.

Mike Hogewood: The story of Hogewood’s post-WFMY days is a tragic one. He left News 2 to handle anchoring duties on ACC programs for Fox Sports Net and also did sideline reports for Raycom games.

The success got to his head and his weight ballooned to over 400 lbs. In Chapel Hill on November 2nd, 2002, with UNC only down 31-7 to Maryland, Hogewood was attempting to catch up to fleet-footed Tar Heels coach John Bunting intending to ask if the Heels were going to mix in some play-action in the 2nd half to keep the Terrapins off balance.

Unfortunately, Bunting was never able to answer that question. Years of poor eating habits finally caught up with Hogewood and he had a massive heart attack on the field. The same paramedics that had saved ACC referee Jim Knight’s life five years earlier could not resuscitate the beloved sportscaster.

Beside themselves with grief, the Heels were unable to maintain their first-half scoring pace and lost to Maryland 51-7.

Remember kids, put down the PSP and go out and get some exercise. Learn from the mistakes that Hogewood made.

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: