“Detroit is the safest city in America.”
I’ll never forget when my colleague, Mark Gaughan, told me that.
Given the Motor City’s reputation, that demanded a follow-up question, which went something like “How do you figure?”
Gaughan explained that, some years ago, he had rented a car and driven to Detroit to cover a Bills-Lions preseason game. After pulling into the parking garage, he grabbed his bag from the back seat and headed into the game.
He returned some eight hours or so later to find the driver’s-side door open and the engine still running. He was so focused on the task at hand that he had forgotten to close the door – or even shut the car off – before going into the game.
Nobody took it, though. Other than a nearly empty gas tank, the car was exactly how he left it. From that point forward, Detroit’s reputation as the safest city in America, at least in Gaughan’s mind, was secure.
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That’s my favorite mishap Gaughan had with a rental car, but over his remarkable career at The Buffalo News, which spanned 43½ years, it was far from his only travel mishap. Rental car executives across the nation will be happy to know that Gaughan publicly announced his retirement Monday.
They are some of the few who would celebrate such an occasion.
For the rest of us who have gotten to know him over those four-plus decades, Gaughan’s retirement is met with mixed emotions, to say the least.
Of course, all of us at The News are thrilled that he will get to enjoy a happy, healthy and hopefully long retirement.
Mark Gaughan announced his retirement from The Buffalo News on social media on Monday.
Buffalo News file photo
I know that I speak for all of us on the Bills beat, however, when I say that his daily presence is already sorely missed. Evidence can be seen in the hundreds of well wishes that flooded his replies just hours after Mark made his retirement announcement on social media. Many of those came from fellow journalists who cover the team.
We work in a competitive business, but the nature of that work means spending many hours together in press boxes, locker rooms and the media room at One Bills Drive. You get to know all the people covering the team fairly well. Good luck finding any one of them with a bad word to say about Mark.
So many of those well wishes – from competitors, no less – acknowledged his brilliance as a reporter and writer, but more importantly, they referred to him as an even better human being.
“Whenever people describe someone as the nicest guy in the world, I’ll say, ‘Stop right there. Mark Gaughan is the nicest guy in the world,’ ” said former News sports columnist Jerry Sullivan, who spent years on the Bills beat with Gaughan and the late Allen Wilson. “He was such a friend on the road, much more than just a colleague.”
I won’t sugarcoat it. Gaughan’s retirement is a tremendous blow to The News. You simply don’t replace that kind of institutional knowledge. While he’s rightfully best known for his coverage of the Bills, the reality is Gaughan can do, and did, basically every job in the department, having started as a part-time clerk in 1981.
“He would always do whatever you asked him to do. There was no job that was too small for him or no job that was too big for him,” former News sports editor Steve Jones said. “He was a jack-of-all-trades and a master of all of them.”
As the newspaper industry has changed, so did Mark’s role. In recent years, he jumped in on the editing desk when needed. There are very few, if any, past presidents of the Pro Football Writers of America who would be willing to do that work. Gaughan spent 16 years as a leadership trainer for the Dale Carnegie Course, and that showed in his approach to the job.
“Covering the Masters, covering NCAA basketball when the regionals were in town – the guy could do anything,” Jones said. “I don’t ever remember him saying ‘I can’t do that’ or ‘I shouldn’t be doing that.’ You sent him out to a high school game on a Saturday afternoon, and it was not a problem. He did it all, and he did it all very well.”
More congratulations came from Bills fans, who thanked him for 35 years of coverage of their favorite team. Some of them may not know this, but Gaughan played a key role in helping six former Bills make it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In addition to spending 12 years on the Hall of Fame selection committee, he presented the case to voters for Joe DeLamielleure, James Lofton, Thurman Thomas, Bruce Smith, Ralph Wilson and Andre Reed.
Former Bills receiver Andre Reed speaks during his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame at Fawcett Stadium in Canton, Ohio, on Aug. 2, 2014. Reed thanked News sports writer Mark Gaughan in his speech.
Buffalo News file photo
DeLamielleure was elected 18 years after his playing career ended. Reed was elected 14 years after his playing career ended. He thanked Gaughan in his Hall of Fame speech.
Would all of them be in the Hall of Fame if it weren’t for Gaughan’s presentations? It’s fair to wonder.
Not that he would ever take credit. I remember the night Reed found out he was elected – Saturday, Feb. 1, 2014. I went out to a late dinner with Gaughan in New York City, across the Hudson River from the site of Super Bowl XLVIII the following day.
It was my first Super Bowl, and I was sitting at the table listening as Gaughan told the story of Reed finally getting the necessary votes.
For a kid who grew up in Lewiston and whose first real football memory is Wide Right, it genuinely could get no better. I’ve been lucky enough to call Gaughan a co-worker for 16 years, but I’ve been reading his work for longer than that.
Whether Gaughan knew it or not, when I got to The News, he was my mentor. In fact, he is the model that every young reporter should aspire to follow.
“He’s a classic, throwback journalist,” Sullivan said. “He believed in straight down the middle, do the journalism, do the reporting. Do your job and go home to your family.”
There is an art to being concise, to using 800 good words to tell a story rather than 1,200 mediocre ones. That’s a lesson I’m still learning. (Mark would probably say this column has gone on too long, but in this case, too bad!) As such, he was in favor of simple ledes (newspaper slang for the beginning of a story) that got right to the point.
“Football people” have a way of making their sport hilariously, and sometimes needlessly, complicated. Gaughan had a way of taking that terminology, which often sounds like a foreign language, and translating it so everyone could understand, regardless of whether they’ve ever put on a helmet.
One of the more notable congratulatory messages Gaughan received came from a former Bills player – and it showed how simple language can be effective.
“Job well done Mark,” quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick wrote on X. “Always appreciated your professionalism and friendship throughout the years … enjoy retirement!!!”
One minute later, Fitzpatrick followed with another post. “Thanks for not going too hard on me in 2009, ha,” the ex-quarterback posted, along with a screenshot of an article that used a picture of Fitzpatrick in those horrible old Bills uniforms (you know the ones). The accompanying headline read “Buffalo News writer calls Bills’ offense ‘horrible.’” The date on the article was Oct. 30, 2009.
Here’s the thing: That offense was horrible. Just a few weeks before the article came out, the Browns’ infamous 6-3 win over the Bills in Orchard Park had set the sport back 50 years. The following week, quarterback Trent Edwards got hurt, leading to Fitzpatrick going into the lineup.
What Gaughan wrote, or in this case said, was true. You could always bank on that. It’s why he earned Fitzpatrick’s respect, even if his reporting on those teams was critical.
“He was the guy that was so into the finite details of everything,” said Sal Maiorana, the longtime Bills beat writer for the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. “There was no story that Mark worked on that you didn’t believe he had it dead right. He was just so good. He had so many resources – and sources. He is such a good reporter.
“I think that’s what stands out the most about Mark, is he’s such a good reporter. That is what our job is all about. We can all be good writers and use big words and all that, but Mark got right down to the nuts and bolts of a story, and that, to me, is what separated him from a lot of us.”
Maiorana and Gaughan have known each other since their days at Buffalo State, having worked together at the student newspaper, The Record. Very few, if any, journalists have covered more Bills games over the past 35 years than they have.
“I would say Mark is just the ultimate professional,” Maiorana said. “He was the level-headed managing editor of The Record and I was the hot-headed sports editor who was usually in the pub at deadline and Mark had to reel me back in. So that goes all the way back to college, where he’s been the level-headed guy who was such a professional, and he’s obviously done that for his entire career at The Buffalo News.”
As for the rest of those social media congratulations, I avoided them, mostly because acknowledging his retirement would be admitting it’s true. More importantly, a 240-character post on X never could properly summarize just how impactful Mark has been on my career.
Gaughan’s last big assignment for The News was the NFL draft. That’s fitting, because his yearly research into prospects is unmatched. About 10 days before the draft, Gaughan emailed those of us at The News who cover the Bills – myself, Katherine Fitzgerald, Ryan O’Halloran and our editors – a spreadsheet that included the heights, weights, arm lengths and 40 times of the top prospects in our class. It was to help in our coverage, so that the information was immediate.
That’s not the only spreadsheet he kept. During the season, he would chart every play of every game. Want to know how many times the Bills blitzed against Miami last year? Just text Mark. Need to know how many plays the Bills ran with three receivers on the field? Text Mark.
He could have kept that information to himself. He put in the work, after all, and was under no obligation to share it. That’s just simply not his style.
One of the unfortunate truths in this business is that it can be very territorial. Egos get involved. The complete opposite is true with Mark. You will not find a reporter as accomplished in his field with less of an ego or one more willing to share his knowledge with co-workers.
John Wooden once said “happiness begins when selfishness ends.”
You will not find a more selfless person than Mark. He had a way of critiquing the work of young reporters that made it clear he was coming from a place of genuine care. His only hope in offering advice was to help that reporter get better at his or her job.
Gaughan had shared his retirement plans with those of us at The News who cover the team, but he otherwise kept it under wraps. I asked him on the first night of the draft if he planned to keep it that way, or if he would share it with the media room.
He said he intended to keep it quiet, so I respected his wishes, as tough as that was. I badly wanted everyone else in the room to get the opportunity to offer their best to him.
On Saturday, once the draft was over, I was having a conversation with another reporter when Gaughan finished for the day and headed for the exit. We shared a quick goodbye, but I didn’t want to make much more of his departure, knowing that he wanted to keep it quiet.
When I got back to my computer, there was a card from him on my laptop. The details in that card will remain between us, but it’s the most meaningful feedback I’ve ever received in my career. It’s also a perfect illustration of how Gaughan never wanted the story to be about him.
Gaughan’s favorite quote, one that he repeated often to his kids – Ben, 34, Michael, 31, and Mariana, 26, is from Jack Harbaugh, father of current NFL coaches Jim and John Harbaugh. One day, when he was dropping his boys off at school, Jack Harbaugh told them to “attack this day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind!”
I have no doubt that Mark will do that in retirement, with his wife, Lynn, by his side.
I’ll close by giving her just one reminder.
On your first trip together, hopefully to a beach with a great golf course nearby, make sure Mark turns off the rental car and locks the doors.
Not every city is as safe as Detroit.
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