Drew Sharp remembered by Izzo, Dantonio, others

EAST LANSING - The death of Detroit Free Press sports columnist Drew Sharp was mourned Friday by members of the Michigan State University family, including men's basketball coach Tom Izzo. They reflected on a journalist who wasn't afraid to share his opinions about the school's basketball and football teams.

Izzo said in a statement he considered Sharp, a Detroit native, "one of my closest friends in the media."

The Free Press reported Friday that Sharp, 56,died at his home in Bloomfield Hills. The Free Press reported an autopsy conducted by the Oakland Country Medical Examiner's office showed Sharp died of hypertensive cardiovascular disease and was pronounced dead at 7:07 a.m.

"Drew had the unique ability and wit to rip you one day and laugh with you the next," Izzo said in the statement. "I didn’t always agree with him and he didn’t always agree with me, but he was always willing to ask the question and listen to my answer. He wasn’t afraid to share his opinion, but he also wasn’t afraid to occasionally change his mind. He never took sports too seriously and loved to evoke emotional responses from his readers who did."

Drew Sharp, Detroit Free Press sports columnist, dies at 56

Izzo also said he enjoyed seeing Sharp at press conferences and games "even though I knew he would let me hear about it if we lost."

"I consider it a privilege that the last thing he covered was MSU Basketball Media Day and his last column was about our program," Izzo added. "It simply won’t be the same without Drew."

Media day for Izzo's team was held Thursday at the Breslin Center. Sharp's final column was published Friday in the Free Press and online. It mentioned several unknowns Izzo's team faces this season and how the Spartans — with four highly recruited freshmen — will respond to one of Izzo's toughest schedules amidst injuries to two key players.

MSU football coach Mark Dantonio said in a statement that what he most admired about Sharp was that he always showed up around the team he covered whether he wrote something negative or positive about them.

Dantonio also remembers Sharp as one of the reporters who always followed him out of press conferences so he could sneak in one more question – “usually an extremely difficult one.”

“That was simply Drew,” Dantonio said.

Sharp was scheduled to cover MSU’s football game Saturday night at Maryland.

“It’s stunning to know he won’t be here, with his colleagues, doing what  he loved to do,” Dantonio said. “We will miss him greatly.”

George Perles, MSU's former football coach and a current member of the school's Board of Trustees, described Sharp as a journalist who "did everything the right way."

"I can say he was always fair and honest with me," Perles said. "He was a real pro in what he did."

Drew Sharp's final column: Michigan State's Tom Izzo stares into the unknown

Joel Ferguson, chair of the MSU board, recalls several conversations with Sharp over the years, especially when school officials had to conduct searches for new football coaches.

After Perles was fired by the school in 1994, the football program was led by Nick Saban (1995-99), Bobby Williams (2000-02), Morris Watts (interim coach in 2002 after Williams' firing) and John L. Smith (2003-06) before it found success with current coach Dantonio, hired in 2007.

Ferguson said Sharp wasn't afraid to challenge the MSU administration when it had to make a tough decision about athletics and never gave into pressure from fans to tone down his opinions.

“I used to tease him and say 'You made an industry out of not agreeing with people,'" Ferguson said, laughing. "He found a way to insightfully take a position the super-fans didn’t want to hear. You knew he was going to nail what was going on; he did his homework."

Terry Denbow, who was MSU's spokesman for nearly 30 years, referred to former President Theodore Roosevelt's "The Man in the Arena" speech when asked to share his thought's about Sharp's career. Roosevelt said in 1910 that it's not the critic who counts, but "the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood."

Sharp covered Spartan athletics with consistency by attending games, weekly press conferences, interviews and practices, and was that "man in the arena" who wasn't afraid to be confronted about his work, Denbow said. Denbow, who lives in Okemos, retired from MSU in 2010 and developed a friendship with Sharp that was built with on and off the record trust.

"He was always open to discussions," Denbow said. "And years later, we would laugh about those days. He was no-nonsense on the job, but he would always do his homework."

Before Sharp became a Free Press columnist, he was the newspaper's MSU beat writer. Sharp was hired in 1983; it was his only newspaper job. He graduated from the University of Michigan and wrote in his bio posted on the newspaper's website that he "never participated in one minute of organized sports due to two open heart surgeries before the age of eight."

"Not too high, not too low," Denbow said of Sharp's approach to the job. "Whether in grief or euphoria (pertaining to MSU sports), he was always the same because he never became a part of that. He was always the same. He wasn’t jumping on or off a bandwagon. He was always in the parade, but not on the bandwagon — nor should he have been.”

Eric Lacy is a reporter for the Lansing State Journal. Contact him at 517-377-1206 or elacy@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @EricLacy.