NEW YORK (April, 2017) – Veteran sportswriter Roger Rubin will receive the Mike Cohen “Good Guy” Award from the Met Basketball Writers Assn. on Wednesday, April 26, during the 84th NIT/MBWA All-Met Haggerty Awards Dinner.
The Haggerty Dinner, to be held at the Westchester Marriott in Tarrytown, NY, is the longest running media-managed college basketball awards program in the United States.
Rubin first became a friend of college basketball in the New York Metropolitan area when, after a year reporting on national colleges and Major League Baseball at
Sports Illustrated, he began writing for
New York Newsday. He was charged with covering an enormous range of programs, from the mid-majors to the junior colleges, and his passion that every program be treated with equal respect allowed him to tell the sensational stories of triumph and human interest from all corners of the area.
Whether it was chronicling Fordham’s drive to the 1992 NCAA Tournament or NYU’s 1994 run to the Division III Final Four, or Queensboro Community College reaching the 1991 NJCAA Elite Eight, Rubin made sure readers in New York could follow noteworthy local stories in the pages of
Newsday. He was a driving force in the creation of a weekly local college sports show on New York’s PBS station and served as the show’s managing editor.
Next was a move to the
New York Daily News where he spent 14 seasons covering St. John’s and the Big East. His reasoned and authoritative reporting made the
News a destination for Red Storm fans, Seton Hall fans and all interested in the happenings of the conference. The last three of those seasons, he also served as the
Daily News’ national college basketball columnist where – in addition to writing about the biggest stories around the country – he was again able to tell stories of triumph and tragedy at other area Division I schools like Manhattan, St. Francis Brooklyn, Columbia and Wagner.
At the
Daily News, Rubin was nominated several times for AP Sports Editors national writing awards, winning twice. When he wasn’t chronicling college basketball, he was writing about Major League Baseball. He has voted on several of MLB’s national awards and is a Hall of Fame voter. He also penned a book,
The Great New York Sports Debate.
Most-recently, Rubin’s work is again being seen in
Newsday, the
New York Post and on ESPN.com.
Though most peg Rubin as a New Yorker, he actually grew up in Boston. He fell in love with sports writing while attending Columbia University and covering a Lions football team in a national-record 44-game losing streak. He lives in Manhattan.
The MBWA’s “Good Guy” Award is named in memory of Mike Cohen, former head of sports information at NBC Sports and Manhattan College, and former publicity director at Yonkers Raceway. He also was a consultant to Fordham University and operated his own public relations firm prior to his untimely passing in 1988 at the age of 44. Anyone involved in college basketball in the Met area is eligible for this award; the only criteria is that they --- male or female --- be a “Good Guy.”
View the entire list of MBWA Mike Cohen 'Good Guy' Awards