John McClain’s first NFL training camp was in 1977 with the Houston Oilers. At some point after that, a kid growing up 90 miles east of Houston became an avid reader of his writing in the Houston Chronicle.
Soon after that, the kid became his biggest fan.
I wanted to be just like McClain, only covering the Cowboys instead of the Oilers. I finally got a chance to tell him that the night before one of the AFC Championship Games in the 1990s while I was covering the NFL for the Orlando Sentinel. We became fast friends, and he became my mentor.
One season became another, and now, years later, McClain is calling it quits. He announced Thursday he is retiring, effective today.
“I’m three months into my 47th year at the Chron, and Thursday is my last day,” McClain wrote in a goodbye column. “Counting almost four years working at the Waco Tribune-Herald while attending Baylor, this is my 51st year as a sportswriter — a good time to power down the laptop on a full-time basis.”
The General, as he came to be affectionately known, will be missed, not just by me, but by everyone in the Houston Texans organization and others in the NFL media. He is friendly, kind, humble, dedicated and giving, which is why he was one of the most popular NFL writers among his peers in a competitive, cutthroat business.
Media members in the Pro Football Writers of America voted him the 2006 Bill Nunn Award (formerly the Dick McCann Award) winner for a long and distinguished career covering pro football.
“McClain is the walking dictionary of stuff you need to know and all the great stories,” PFT’s Mike Florio said on Sports Radio 610. “He was always supportive, a great guy and the coverage of football won’t be the same without him.”
McClain will continue to do six weekly radio shows around the country.