- Jack Todd
Jack Todd (born
1946 inNebraska ) has been a sports columnist for over 10 years with the Montreal Gazette.He is a graduate of the University of Nebraska, where he was a scholarship athlete in track and field, specializing in the high jump, triple jump and 400 meters.
After working for the Akron Beacon-Journal, Detroit Free Press and Miami Herald, Todd left the U.S. during the Vietnam War in order to dodge the draft and settled first in Vancouver, where he was a general assignment reporter for the Vancouver Sun. After stints with Radio-Canada International in Montreal and several years spent trying to write the Great American Novel, Todd joined the Gazette in 1986 as a copy editor on the sports desk and spent four years as city columnist before moving to sports, where he has covered two World Cup soccer tournaments and five Olympic Games. He is known for his cynical approach and general discontentment as well as for an abrasive style for writing.
Todd won the National Newspaper Award for sportswriting in 1999, an honour for which he has been nominated three times. His book, The Taste of Metal, was short-listed for a Governor General's Award and won the Mavis Gallant Award for non-fiction. In addition to his column duties, he is currently at work on a lengthy novel set in Nebraska and Wyoming during the 19th Century.
He is known to Montreal Gazette readers as the MMQB, or Monday Morning Quarterback, and writes his opinions about the pervious nights' sports games in the column of the same title. His column also features his selections for "Hero of the week" & "Zero of the Week," and frequently goes on to list other heroes and zeroes. Given his rather grouchy writing style and columnist's persona,
Barry Bonds has almost perpetually been a Zero for his alleged steroid abuse along withCanadian Football League legend and former US MarineDon Matthews .As recently as the morning of August 27th, the MMQB has officially started his own blog, though not online. The initial column is littered with cultural internet slang, which it can be said is typical of the blog-writing genre.
Jack Todd has resided in the suburb of
Greenfield Park, Quebec on the south shore ofMontreal since he began working at The Gazette.External links
* [http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/columnists/jack_todd.html Jack Todd] , "Montreal Gazette".
* [http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-71-695-4039-11/that_was_then/conflict_war/jack_todd The Life of Jack Todd - War Resister] , "CBC", April 28, 2000.Further reading
*Todd, Jack (2001). [http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/titledetail.cfm?titleNumber=698122 "Desertion : In the Time of Vietnam"] , Houghton Mifflin. (memoir)
*Lowe, Mick, [http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0528-05.htm " US Media Stonewall Canadian Journalist's Story of Vietnam Desertion"] , "Straight Goods",
May 28 ,2001 .
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