Mike Lopresti

2023

By Mark Montieth

Mike Lopresti has traveled the world while establishing a nationally recognized career as a sports journalist, but he never forgot his Indiana roots. He never left them, either.

He has covered 43 NCAA Final Fours, 32 World Series, 30 Super Bowls, 30 NBA Finals, 30 Masters golf tournaments, 20 Rose Bowls and 16 Olympics. Someone with such a frenzied and far-flung itinerary could live anywhere, but Lopresti always returns home to his native Richmond. That humble attitude and personal touch has guided him through one of the greatest careers any Indiana journalist – sports or otherwise – has achieved.

Lopresti’ s first professional byline appeared in the Richmond Palladium-Item in June of 1970, following his junior year of high school. He continued working for the P-I throughout his years as a student at Ball State University and joined the staff full-time upon graduation. He also served as a student manager for Richmond’s basketball and track teams in high school. You might think that has nothing to do with his journalism career, but it actually has a lot to do with it. Consider it absolute proof that his work ethic far exceeded his ego, an essential quality for any reputable journalist.

After the Palladium-Item was purchased by Gannett, the quality of Lopresti’s work quickly captured the attention of Gannett News Service editors. Before long he was working “national” stories that appeared in Gannett newspapers throughout the country and, eventually, in USA Today.

Covering major sporting events didn’t swell his head, however. He didn’t write to inspire a knee-jerk reaction. He wanted merely to inform and entertain readers, and he accomplished that with rare creativity and hustle.

Some examples:

While covering the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia in 1984, he found and wrote about the Yugoslav ski jumper who was famous – although not by name – for the violent crash that symbolized “the agony of defeat” in the opening to the weekly television show Wide World of Sports.

At the 1987 Final Four in New Orleans, when Indiana University won the NCAA championship, he sought out the Louisiana State University fan IU Coach Bob Knight had physically confronted in response to profane insults during the 1981 Final Four.

Lopresti’s integrity resulted in a virtual clinic of journalistic fundamentals at the 1996 Summer Olympic games in Atlanta. While other media outlets were reporting security guard Richard Jewell had been identified as the prime suspect for the pipe bomb explosion that killed two people in Centennial Olympic Park, Lopresti was the one who thought to get both sides of the story. He waited four hours in a parking garage to talk with Jewell before reporting his story. As a result, USA Today was spared a lawsuit for libel. CNN, NBC and the New York Post, on the other hand, had to pay major out-of-court settlements after Jewell was cleared by the FBI.

Four years later, when the Summer Olympics were held in Australia, Lopresti tracked down Peter Norman, the forgotten Aussie sprinter who had stood on the victory stand as a second-place finisher with John Carlos and Tommie Smith when they executed their legendary Black Power salute in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Thirty-two years later, Norman continued to support their cause.

And to prove there were no limits to his work ethic, Lopresti rode a bicycle to complete some of his assignments in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics so he could write a personal account of the daily travel experience of many of China’s citizens.

Few journalists can conjure such ideas. Fewer still are willing to put in the time and effort to execute them. The common approach might be good enough, but greatness is found outside the mainstream.

Lopresti also mastered the more fundamental but still vital — and perhaps most difficult — element of sports reporting: the on-deadline game story. He showed up for games fully prepared, aware of all the potential angles and well-versed in the background of the participants. Better yet, he was quick and agile with a keyboard, able to tweak his story as the game played out and the clock wound down and send clean, concise and clever copy upon its conclusion.

His accounts of major sporting events couldn’t be fully appreciated by readers who had no idea what had gone into producing them but were widely admired by colleagues who knew from personal experience the enormity of the challenge.  

Lopresti further displayed his core values by leaving the daily grind in 2013. The profession had changed, and not to his liking. Pressure was building to produce click-bait articles that produced eye-catching headlines, regardless of their merit, as well as to establish a social media presence with hot takes and pithy comments. He was more inclined toward quiet research and thoughtful writing.  

Ink will always run through his veins, however. He continued displaying his expertise in semi-retirement, writing weekly sports articles for the Indianapolis Business Journal as well as for the NCAA’s website. He covered his 43rd Final Four earlier in the month of his Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame induction, maintaining his ambition of covering more than half of them all. For Lopresti, it’s always been about the story, and the quality of the story matters more than the volume of its readers.

Given his humble and hustling approach, it only follows that Lopresti is widely regarded as one of the “good guys” of his profession. His ego has remained firmly in check while others with less talent succumb to the head-swelling lure of having an audience. “Lopo” has always been difficult to find away from press row at major sporting events. He doesn’t hold court in hotel lobbies or throw back drinks with back-slapping buddies in bars. He’s more likely to be engaged in the nose-to-grindstone tasks of researching, interviewing and writing.

Despite his aversion to chest-pounding, Lopresti’s accomplishments have not gone unnoticed. He is a member of the halls of fame for Ball State University Journalism, Indiana Sportswriters and Sportscasters and the United States Basketball Writers Association. For his body of work and the way he has gone about achieving it, he deserves admittance to this one as well.  

Richmond should be proud. All of journalism, too.