This photo was taken near the Olympic stadium during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. That's me.

Okay, prepare to be surprised. 

As a hobby, I used to cover women's collegiate gymnastics for a national gymnastics publication. 

Okay, okay, I know what you're all thinking. I hear it all the time. People giggle and say, "He must have a lot of fun hanging out with collegiate women wearing leotards." 

Actually, I had wanted to be a gymnast since I saw Mary Lou Retton in the early 80s. But gymnastics is a rich man's sport, and there was no way my family could afford to send me off to a gym. In the late 1980s, when I went to the University of Florida, I attended my first women's collegiate gymnastics meet and fell in love with the sport. 

That very first meet, I happened to sit down next to a man practicing to be a gymnastics judge. That man, Raul Arocho, went on to become my best friend and taught me how to judge the sport. He's now a high-ranking judge in the sport, and we have attended many major competitions together, including the Olympics.

If you want to see an online slideshow of my times at the Olympics, including shots of the gymnastics competition, you can go to my Olympics home page.

After attending meets for a few months, it became clear that the local media really wasn't covering the sport well, mainly because they didn't understand it. So I started writing for the local student newspaper, The Independent Florida Alligator. Soon thereafter, I began writing for the Gymnastics Insider, a publication covering nothing but women's collegiate gymnastics. 

I came very close to being a judge, actually scheduling to take my first judging test. But being a judge basically means kissing every weekend goodbye, and I couldn't do that and be a newspaper editor.

• Latest Official Collegiate Gymnastics Scores & Rankings (very, very useful)
• Listing of All Collegiate Gymnastic Team Web Sites
• University of Florida Gymnastics Home Page

• Gymn Forum -- An awesome Internet-based gymnastics news service (free)
• International Gymnast Magazine
• USA Gymnastics Magazine

Being a gymnastics fan at the University of Florida introduced me to Charlie Eggleston, who went on to become one of my dearest friends. He was just as nutty about gymnastics as was I. 

Charlie passed away a few years ago, and his loss had a profound effect on me. It was the first time in my life that somebody close to me died. 

Using Sunline's "In Memory" site, I created a Web site in tribute to Charlie. You can view it at: