About The Front Porch
If you allow a college athletic director to speak long enough, you’ll inevitably hear it – an athletic department serves as the front porch of a university. It’s a cliche, sure, but like most cliches, it’s repeated as frequently as it is because it’s true.
A college’s major-revenue sports teams are the most popular and visible entity of the school. More than any academic program or notable alumni, it’s the thing that people often most closely identify with a given institution. It’s how we develop ties and forge emotional bonds with a university, regardless of whether or not we went there.
On that metaphorical front porch, you can learn everything there is to know about this unapologetically unique venture that so many of us love – from the heartwarming stories of dedication, perseverance and athletic excellence that schools love touting to the more unsavory underbelly that has a way of generating headlines of its own. At The Front Porch, we’ll aim to present college athletics in its entirety. We’ll take deeper looks at major news stories as they develop. We’ll run features on athletes, coaches and those who make up the machine. If we grow in the way I believe we can, we’ll have enterprise and investigative work that shines a light on important, overlooked subjects. We’ll even have a little fun, too.
If you love college sports, warts and all, consider this your new home. It even comes with a beautiful front porch.
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About me
My name is Craig Meyer and I’m a sports journalist who writes about trending topics in the world of college sports for USA Today. Prior to that, I spent 10 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette covering college sports, the final six of which were spent writing about University of Pittsburgh athletics, primarily the Panthers’ football and men’s basketball teams. In my decade in Western Pennsylvania, I also covered West Virginia University, Duquesne University and Robert Morris University, along with a slew of national college sports topics. My work has been awarded and recognized by the Associated Press Sports Editors, the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, the Pennsylvania News Media Association, the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation. In 2022, I was named as the sports beat reporter of the year in Pennsylvania for my work covering Pitt basketball.
I graduated from Boston University, where I got more into hockey than I ever thought possible while still bemoaning the lack of a football team. I was born and raised in Louisville, Ky., where my love of college sports was first developed, and I currently live in Denver with my wife, son and two dogs.
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