Chris Dufresne recently retired from the Los Angeles Times after a career that started at age 18 on the loading docks. He is now ready to blog at his leisure on college football and anything else that catches in his craw. Dufresne served as the Times’ national college football/basketball columnist from 1995 to Dec.11, 2015. He was overtaken years ago by an alter ego named “Rankman” who put college teams in their places. He has chronicled the defunct United States Football League, NFL, major league baseball and multiple golf majors. Dufresne has earned a career golf grand slam, covering at least one British, PGA, U.S. Open and Masters championships. He also sweated through the 1996 Summer Olympics and froze during six straight Winter Olympic games, from Lillehammer to Sochi. He has earned several APSE awards, won two first-place plaques from the Los Angeles Press Club and was named 2011 California Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. He also served in 2013 as President of the Football Writers Assn. of America and earned FWAA “Beat Writer of the Year” honors for 2015.  Dufresne resides in an empty-nest in Chino Hills, Ca., with his Stanford wife Sheila, who still considers the 1982 Cal game the Crime of the Century.

Read Dufresne’s farewell column and Los Angeles Times archive here…

Photo Credit: Jay L. Clendenin, L.A. Times