After 30 years covering the Oilers and Tennessee Titans, Paul Kuharsky reflects on how the beat, the NFL and his approach to journalism have changed.
By PAUL KUHARSKY
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Shortly after I arrived in Houston to cover the final year of the Oilers and their move to Nashville for The Tennessean, I met with Floyd Reese at the team’s administrative office. That building was three-tenths of a mile around a big curve from the practice facility, with El Rio turning into El Camino on that quick drive.
Reese was great, a friendly guy full of laughs, easy to talk to from the start. Establishing relationships in Houston a year ahead of everyone would prove to pay off big, because he and Jeff Fisher and many others would remain in their jobs well into the Music City era.
I left his office with a full notebook and headed around the bend to practice, behind a minitruck filled with the giant bottles that refill water coolers. The driver took the turn and overshot the driveway he wanted on the right. He braked and put it in reverse. In an unfamiliar rental car, I was late for the horn, couldn’t find reverse and watched him back right into me, folding up the front of my vehicle.
Reese slowed down as he passed me on the left and rolled down his window.
“Is that your car,” he asked.
“A rental,” I said. “Can you believe that?”
He shook his head with that big smile and said, “Good luck,” as he drove on.
That rough start aside, I have had good luck. I’ve had great luck.
Today marks 30 years since I started on the Oilers beat in Houston for The Tennessean. There was a stretch where I wasn’t totally focused on the team when I wrote features for the paper and a stretch when I was covering the whole AFC South for ESPN.com. But for the most part, the franchise is my professional reporting identity.
Bud Adams’ decision to relocate determined where my life landed, where I met my wife and where we’ve raised our son. I’m 57, and I’ve lived in Nashville and Brentwood for 28 years – 49 percent of my life. When I went all in on being a sportswriter, I was going to go where the work opportunity took me, and wow, did I hit the jackpot.
In a shifting industry, while many things can appear more appealing than working on a beat, a team supplies an enduring audience, subject and reason for one's work to exist. Of course, it’s even better when that’s an NFL team.
There are a few of us here who have long-term identities as Titans reporters, and I’m proud that on a national scale, many high-quality colleagues think of me as the guy here. The Hall of Fame thinks of me that way as a 10-year member of the selection committee (a group that deserves to be under fire after last year’s failure).
I’ll soon see the Titans in their fifth home stadium. I’m covering my eighth head coach. I met with Bud Adams in his Houston office, which included a Cherokee Indian museum, knew Tommy Smith and had private interviews with Amy Adams Strunk before she stopped talking.
For Super Bowl XXXIV at the Georgia Dome, I was near the 50-yard line in the press box and was being pressured for an MVP vote before we knew who won. I have versions of memorabilia from an alternate universe where they won the game. For pretty much empty stadiums of the lame duck year at the Astrodome and for Covid at Nissan Stadium in 2020, I was there. During the current stretch of 13 wins in 44 games, I’ve been there too.
Thirty Years of Stories
There has been the thrill of breaking stories. When I wrote in 2000 that Reggie White was coming out of retirement and considering the Titans -- he wound up playing for the Panthers instead -- I then appeared on Tony Kornheiser’s radio show. The guy who helped me out with Bruce Springsteen bootleg CDs put a note in the one that soon arrived in the mail that he heard and enjoyed me.
There have been cool moments where you really feel on the inside of things. Blaine Bishop was in a contract dispute very soon after the team got to Tennessee. He talked to me during that for a couple of stories. But apparently, he wasn’t talking to Fisher, who told me he’d owe me one if I shared Bishop’s number.
There have been weird moments of connection. A guy with DeAndre Hopkins' old phone number told me via text that he called Tim Kelly, “Pretty Boy Kelly.” And I foolishly wrote that, only to get a DM from Hopkins telling me we had not, in fact, spoken. I cleared it up with a piece, but it started what was a pretty good relationship with Hopkins, who shared a lot of great insight both on and off the record with me.
There have been arguments. With Reggie Roby, who did not like a line of questioning that actually came straight from something Fisher said in a press conference moments before; With Darren Bates, who was upset I questioned the special teams Pro Bowl qualifications of a teammate; With Wesley Woodyard, who didn’t like questions about his leadership; More lightheartedly with Taylor Lewan and Will Compton about how Rishard Mathews quitting the team was “for the boys.” With Mike Munchak, over closing practice. With Ken Whisenhunt, who didn’t like questions about his record.
There have been misunderstandings: With Nate Washington about his willingness to take a pay reduction. With Logan Ryan about his stance as opposed to Vrabel’s about the need for success as a player to be an effective leader. With the Titans having an offsite practice, violating Covid rules. The central story was dead on. But I did get an important side detail wrong, corrected it, and became a villain to many fans who thought I should have protected the organization.
There have been friendships and moments: Stand on the sideline of training camp in the heat, work in the locker room multiple times a week, sit in front of your laptop in press rooms and before and after games for hours and you have all kinds of memorable moments that become lore among the gang.
From Samari Rolle’s unwillingness to warm up in snowy conditions because he was such a Florida guy to Marcus Mariota’s long-standing habit of not warming up before official warmups. We were spectators to the locker-room games Bruce Matthews created and the broken rim on the nice basketball setup Hopkins brought to the locker room.
We watched Chig Okonkwo play some intense ping-pong. We asked random players to judge who would win a fight between two writers. When L’Jarius Sneed was at the peak of fan hatred, he got a big delivery in the locker room and the media was curious what it was. Only later did I learn it was a baby carriage for a woman who worked on the janitorial staff. Or was she in the cafeteria?
How Covering the Titans Has Changed
How has it changed?
Guys were looser and more personable back at the start. We weren’t filming them or parsing their words on social media and there were not so many film breakdowns and contract details.
They are more guarded now. The whole operation is more secretive. Some things like that are understandable. Some management and coaches have convinced themselves stuff is more important than it is. We can’t see whatever unfolds in the far-left corner of one practice field.
That will have zero bearing on whether the Titans win or lose. Once upon a time, the locker room was just open after any practice, spring, camp or season. Now I can’t approach a guy coming off the field to chat during camp without an appointment before which a PR person will debrief him on the topic and on me. Early, I could call Fisher or Reese and talk largely on the record any time. Now no one’s name is on any conversation outside a press conference.
What 30 Years Has Changed in Me
How have I changed? At the start, I was strictly a reporter. My opinion didn’t factor into what I did for The Tennessean. We had columnists for that. I might have had some leeway for it as a radio guest. I might lean into something more analytical at times that would probably be labeled as such.
But as the digital age came on strong, "what happened" was not what people wanted. They saw it and knew all about it by the time they got to a paper. When I got to ESPN.com in the summer of 2008, the expectation was that I would tell people, “What did it mean?” That is still the root of what I want to do. Tell you more about why stuff happened and what it means.
When I went independent in 2017, it allowed me to write more and more about what interests me, what I am curious about, what I see and wonder. Am I too blunt and direct? Certainly, at times. Sometimes it’s called for; sometimes I go too far. I think, given this team’s environment, erring on the side of too far rather than not far enough is probably good for the media ecosystem.
I seek proof. I often write and talk about how the NFL is perfectly built to create hope for virtually every team. No game for a non-playoff team sets up 34 weeks of talk with no real evidence of anything. New coaches with new schemes for new players sound promising. The league is filled with turnarounds. All gas, no brakes sounds terrific. But let’s see it. Show us. This franchise is 9-35 in its last 44 games. There were plenty of fresh start elements in there. Plenty of hope. And look at that payoff.
Year 31 is already underway for me, and I will concentrate more on this: I’m not so much going to try to prove my opinion as I’m going to strive to discover whether it's true.
I’ve seen the exciting new coach before. The can't-miss prospect. The disastrous season. The turnaround. The disgruntled veteran. The organizational reshuffle. The quarterback who's supposedly figured it out. The player everybody thinks is finished. The coordinator everyone wants fired.
Experience has changed my threshold for being impressed, alarmed or convinced.
That’s why I think this site is a valuable place for Titans fans, and that’s why I’m so happy to have the freedom that comes with being independent. People sometimes mistake confrontation for a lack of relationships. Thirty years of reporting have taught me that I can hold people accountable and still earn their respect and trust.
It’s a job, but it’s a cool job. People at parties don’t generally turn away when they ask me what I do.
At the Titans' next practice, I won’t be listing a play-by-play of everything that happens. I’ll be looking for another small theme -- the addiction to get-off, the drills that have disappeared, the meaning of the new attack front. Something different that I hope will make readers feel like they got to see it through a whole different pair of glasses.
Thirty years is a long time to do anything.
But with all that’s changed, that’s why, in August 2026, despite a bigger belly and a lot more baldness, I’ll be on the practice field squinting, trying to find something unique, a different angle to investigate and share.
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