Sportswriters learn early that when they depart from straight game coverage and upbeat profiles of the home team's players, there can be trouble. Fans want to admire their heroes.

Kentucky: Bomb Threats

The Lexington Herald-Leader described cash payments by boosters to basketball players at the University of Kentucky. The reaction was swift and angry. Michael York, who wrote the articles with Jeffrey Marx, said, "Basketball has been called the most widely practiced religion in the Bluegrass state."

Fans canceled subscriptions. The newspaper received bomb threats. York was offered a bulletproof vest by a member of the police department. What was especially galling was the reaction of some radio and television journalists, most of whom lined up behind the university. An ABC affiliate said the stories were evidence of the newspaper's "self-serving sensationalism."

The reporters were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

Arizona: Boycotts

When William J. Woestendiek was running The Arizona Daily Star in Tucson he suggested his reporters check the university football program. Clark Hallas and Bob Lowe discovered some unusual hotel bills and learned they were not for the stays of football recruits but for women.

"We ran the story and the roof fell in," Woestendiek recalls. "As our reporters began an intensive investigation of every aspect of the football program, I became the target of a vicious campaign by the community.

"In more than 35 years in the business, I have never been vilified or threatened more."

The threats, he said, were from "business leaders, wealthy alumni, the president of the university and other prominent citizens." Automobile dealers boycotted the newspaper. Letters threatened his family. Woestendiek bent backwards. After the first story, he held off additional pieces so that the school could respond and the team could play in the Fiesta Bowl untarnished.

When the coach failed to meet with the newspaper to answer the charges, the pieces were printed and the Star won a Pulitzer Prize for the investigation.

Iowa: Racism

When Tom Witosky and a fellow reporter on the staff of The Des Moines Register revealed that three members of the University of Iowa basketball team had undergone substance abuse treatment during the summer at a cost to the university of $16,000, a colleague in the newsroom told him, "You have destroyed my son's faith in his hero (one of the players)."

Witosky received letters and calls telling him he was a troublemaker and a racist (the players are black). A month later, two Iowa State athletes attempted an armed robbery of a Burger King and engaged in a shootout with police while trying to escape. Iowa State fans complained that the Register's coverage was too thorough.

And More

After The Montgomery Advertiser published secretly taped conversations between a former Auburn football player and his coaches about payoffs, the football coach suggested that Auburn fans begin a subscription and advertiser boycott.

A story about ticket scalping by football players led to death threats to Oklahoma City reporters, and when Texas A&M football players were shown to be receiving secret payments, bricks were thrown through a Dallas editor's windows.