My motto: Any time spent with Vahe Gregorian is time well spent. You’ll enjoy this hour with the sports columnist for The Kansas City Star as he shares highlights from his 35-year career. He puts us courtside in historic Allen Fieldhouse for the rivalry between Kansas and Missouri. He takes us to the Dominican Republic for the funeral of Royals pitcher Yordano Ventura. Go with Vahe to the home of Chicago Bears Hall of Fame running back Gale Sayers, who was battling dementia before his death. Head to Australia where Vahe went behind the scenes of an agonizing Olympic loss. Spend time with Tom Watson and George Brett, icons of Kansas City. Hear how that city was galvanized in the past decade by the Royals and Chiefs winning championships. And we give a special nod to Vahe’s late father, Vartan Gregorian.

Vahe Gregorian will be one of five journalists enshrined in the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame this weekend at the Final Four in New Orleans. In 2017-18, he was president of the USBWA, which described him as “the ultimate teammate among his colleagues and a role model among his peers.” Gregorian has been sports columnist for The Kansas City Star since 2013 after spending 25 years covering a variety of sports for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He has covered 10 Olympics, three World Series, a Super Bowl, 22 Final Fours and multiple college football bowl games since the late 1980s.

In 2017, the Associated Press Sports Editors named Vahe the national winner for column writing for large market newspapers. He earned another top 10 columnist award from the APSE in 2016, and his work was also recognized as part of a reporting team that was named one of the top 10 projects for that year. He was a Pulitzer Prize nominee in 2000, won several Football Writers Association of America awards, and has been named Missouri Sports Writer of the Year multiple times. His work has been published in “The Best American Sports Writing.” He has published two books: one about former Northwestern football coach Gary Barnett, and the other about former Michigan State football coach George Perles.

Gregorian was born in Beirut, Lebanon and raised in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He played varsity football at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1983 with a degree in English. He earned his master’s degree in journalism at Missouri in ‘88. In 2004, he was chosen as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, where he focused on history and the demise of sportsmanship.

Follow Vahe Gregorian on Twitter: @vgregorian

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