A journalism giant, Chris Mortensen ‘always had a smile on his face’

Mortensen, whose death Sunday at the age of 72 has reverberated in NFL circles, won wide acclaim for a journalism career studded with awards and honors. His genial manner, experienced by Archer and countless others, may have left the more indelible impression, including among those who knew him in his six years (1983-1989) as a reporter at the AJC.

“He was one of those people that was so easy to like,” venerable and retired AJC sports writer Tim Tucker said. “You wanted to be around him. You knew he was a genuine, kind, sweet person who just happened to be the best at his job.”

Mortensen has been widely mourned across the NFL after his death. The cause was not made public, but Mortensen announced in 2016 that he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 throat cancer and stepped away from his job last year. He was paid tributes by the game’s most notable figures, from commissioner Roger Goodell (who called him “one of the most influential and revered reporters in sports”), Falcons owner Arthur Blank (”I considered Chris a personal hero of my mine and it is truly hard to imagine sports journalism without him”) and Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning (“Mort was the best in the business and I cherished our friendship.”) Another great from Mortensen’s past, from his seasons covering the Braves, offered his own tribute.

“A true pro, and easy to talk to,” Braves legend Dale Murphy wrote in a tweet Sunday. “You could sense there were big things to come his way.”

However, Mortensen hardly limited extending his kindness only to the powerful. In 1984, Guerry Clegg was not a terribly important person in Mortensen’s world. He was a clerk in the sports department at the AJC, meaning he answered phones, opened mail and did whatever else he was asked to do. Fresh out of Georgia State, he was on the lowest rung of the ladder. But Mortensen treated him like a peer, engaging him in friendly conversation when he stopped in the AJC office or called in from a press box somewhere in the National League.

“You know how it is,” said Clegg, later to become a sports columnist for the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. “When you’re the youngest, newest, least experienced person there, you really have to earn respect from people. But he didn’t make me feel like that.”

Tucker remembered it as well. Both he and Mortensen left the AJC in 1989 to jump to The National, the short-lived national sports daily. Among the memories that stick out from their time together in New York was when Mortensen visited Tucker’s apartment after the birth of his and wife Katheryn’s first child. It’s not something that most friends — let alone work colleagues — do.

“He really cared about people,” Tucker said. “He cared about people he worked with, he cared about everybody he met.”

Former AJC columnist Jeff Schultz said Mortensen, a husband to Micki and father to Alex, did not fall in the same trap that others in the field do as their stars rise. “I never really saw that with him,” Schultz said. “He was the same guy.”

After Schultz retired from The Athletic in December, he received a congratulatory text from Mortensen. Even as he surely knew his time was limited, Mortensen included an offer to Schultz to let him know if there was anything he could do for him. Schultz noted the number of tributes that have been paid to Mortensen, a giant in his field, focused more on his kindness than his status as one of the greatest sports journalists ever.

Said Schultz, “I think that speaks a lot to the guy that a lot of us knew.”

Mortensen’s professional greatness, though, lay in his dogged and thorough reporting. The highlight of his AJC career was breaking the story that two sports agents (Norby Walters and Lloyd Bloom) broke NCAA rules by paying almost 60 college football players to sign with them while they were still eligible to compete. Mortensen covered the story and broke news for the AJC for two years in what became a national sports scandal. Mortensen’s work was nominated for a Pulitzer, led to a book (“Playing for Keeps”) and earned him a George Polk Award for excellence in journalism. At the time, he was just one of three sports writers to earn the honor. He later earned the Dick McCann Award from the Professional Football Writers of America for his long and distinguished contribution to pro football.

“Just an extraordinary journalist,” Tucker said. “It didn’t really matter what he covered. Even if it hadn’t been sports, it wouldn’t have mattered. He was just such a great reporter, he would have been good at whatever he covered.”

His excellence at his craft was undergirded by his fundamental decency.

“When he was after a story, he was just relentless,” Tucker said. “But he did it in a way that he was so pleasant and fair to everyone that everyone went to talk to him.”

His work at the AJC and the National led to his run of more than three decades at ESPN, where his coverage of the NFL was nearly peerless. His skill as a league insider, appearing on multiple ESPN programs such as “SportsCenter” and the network’s Sunday pregame show, paved the way for other sports writers at newspapers to earn similar positions at television or Internet-based platforms, transforming the sports media business.

“He was, in every sense of the word, a mentor,” said Len Pasquarelli, a former AJC sports writer who covered the Falcons and NFL after Mortensen and ultimately followed him to ESPN. “We’re all going to miss him, obviously.”