Red Smith Award for Bill Dwyre

In 1982, Bill Dwyre accepted the second Red Smith Award on behalf of Times’ sports columnist Jim Murray.

On June 27, Dwyre will accept the 16th Smith award for himself.

Dwyre, The Times’ sports editor since 1981, was selected as the 1996 winner of the award, named for its first recipient and given annually by the Associated Press Sports Editors for major contributions to the field of sports journalism.

In Atlanta planning The Times’ Olympic coverage when he was informed, Dwyre was stunned.

“It struck me, I always felt honored to be on the same sports staff with Jim Murray,” he said Wednesday. “Now to be on the same plaque with him is overwhelming.”

Murray was pleased to have Dwyre in the fraternity.

“The selection of Bill Dwyre for the 1996 Red Smith Award moves up the award’s prestige and enhances the reputation of everyone who ever won it,” Murray said.

“Bill is a professional in every sense of the word, an outstanding editor who has the respect of the community, the staff and everyone who ever closed a press box at 2 o’clock in the morning. Red Smith, whose standards were high, would agree Bill Dwyre measures up to every one of them.”

Dwyre, 52, came to The Times from the Milwaukee Journal in 1981 and within six months was named sports editor. In 1984, he won the National Press Foundation’s editor-of-the-year award for overseeing The Times’ coverage of the Los Angeles Olympic Games.

In the aftermath of the Games, he also won the 1985 National Headliners Award and Los Angeles Times Editorial Award for “sustained excellence by an individual in any department.”

The honors have continued and include Loyola Marymount University’s first Pride of the Lions Award for outstanding professional achievement in the world of sports.

“Bill Dwyre richly deserves to join the distinguished list of sports journalists who have won the coveted Red Smith prize,” said Shelby Coffey III, editor and executive vice president of The Times.

“He has overseen coverage of a vast variety of sports triumphs and disasters in Los Angeles and around the world.

“He has brought innovation, analysis and vibrant reporting to new levels in the sports section of the Los Angeles Times, and he has always done it with a gruff grace and a warmth that his co-workers respect and enjoy.”

Dwyre, like the award’s namesake a Notre Dame graduate, is married to the former Jill Jarvis and is the father of two.

He is one of only four winners of the Red Smith Award to have been primarily an administrator, though, he said, laughing, “I prefer to think of this as an award for my tennis writing.”

Dave Smith, executive sports editor of the Dallas Morning News; former Miami Herald executive sports editor Ed Storin and former Newsday sports editor, the late Dick Sandler, were the previous administrative winners.

Writers who have won the Red Smith Award are Smith, Murray, Shirley Povich of the Washington Post, Fred Russell of the Nashville Banner, Blackie Sherrod of the Dallas Morning News, Si Burick of the Dayton Daily News, Will Grimsley of the Associated Press, Furman Bisher of the Atlanta Journal, Edwin Pope of the Miami Herald, Dave Kindred of the now-defunct National, Tom McEwen of the Tampa Tribune and Dave Anderson of the New York Times.

Dwyre will receive the Red Smith Award in Cleveland at the annual convention of the Associated Press Sports Editors.