Bill Dwyre was taking his seat in the press box at the Louisiana Superdome on Jan. 25, 1981, set to cover Super Bowl XV between Oakland and Philadelphia. And who was he seated next to but the legendary Red Smith, the New York Times columnist whose witty, insightful sports commentary had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1976.

The two had a few things in common. Both were sons of northeastern Wisconsin: Smith from Green Bay and Dwyre from Sheboygan. Both had attended Notre Dame, where they rubbed shoulders with prominent football players. Smith was a contemporary of the 1924 consensus national champs; Dwyre’s classmates won the 1966 title a few months after he graduated. And both made journalistic stops in Milwaukee, Smith with the Sentinel in 1927, and Dwyre as sports editor of the Journal from 1973-81.

“Red was syndicated in the Sentinel, and growing up in Sheboygan, we took the Sentinel every morning,” Dwyre said. “This was a guy that I just revered.”

Dwyre remembers watching an elderly Smith struggle to move around during the game, to the point that he worried about the columnist’s ability to finish his piece on the event. His fears would prove unfounded, however, as the next day’s Times would prove, with Smith’s cutting commentary just as omnipresent as always. “I picked up the paper the next day, and it was incredible,” Dwyre said. “It made your toes curl; it was so good.”

That same year, the Associated Press Sports Editors created the Red Smith Award for outstanding contributions to sports journalism, with Red as the first winner. And fittingly, Dwyre received the Red Smith Award in 1996, one of many honors during Dwyre’s illustrious career.

Dwyre was a three-times-weekly sports columnist for the Los Angeles Times from 2006-15, after serving as sports editor of the paper for the previous 25 years. Dwyre was named national editor of the year by the National Press Foundation in 1985 for the paper’s coverage of the 1984 Olympics. He was named National Headliner Award winner in 1985, sportswriter of the year in Wisconsin in 1980 and sportswriter of the year in California in 2009. 

In 2017, the longtime editor and sports columnist added another accolade to a long list as the 44th recipient of the prestigious Nat Fleischer Award from the Boxing Writers Association of America, a career achievement for excellence in boxing journalism.

“This means a lot to me, because my career was chopped into two parts, one as an editor for so long, and now it’s nice to be recognized for the writing side,” said Dwyre. “I’m probably more proud of the things that I did as a writer.”

It took an excellent writer like Dwyre to recognize, nurture, and guide other talented scribes.

Chris Dufresne, the late Times college sports reporter and columnist, once said of Dwyre: “He was older, in the position of power, the master and commander. I was a young writer trying to find my way and it’s fair to say I owe my career to him. Dwyre was the finest sports editor a writer could work for.”