Coach takes up the mike; news couple's untold story

Fran Curci is on the way out the door to a Devil Rays game, so he'd like to make this quick.

He's not being rude. He's just a busy man, and this kind of time off with his family doesn't come every day.

You'd think the life of a former big-time football coach would have calmed down after leaving the sidelines, but not with Curci.

Since 1991, when he retired after coaching the Tampa Bay Storm to the Arena Football League championship in their first season, Curci has traveled the country as a college football color commentator for Westwood One Radio.

After returning from the Florida State-Maryland game on Sept. 14, he says he can't get enough football.

"I'm a fan," he says. "I love it. If I'm on the road, like at the Maryland game, I'm watching football all day long."

He has called some of college football's biggest games in the past few years, from the Army-Navy game to the Southeastern Conference championship. He was in Miami for Westwood One's broadcast of the Hurricanes' game with Boston College.

Miami's Orange Bowl is familiar turf for Curci. He was an All-American quarterback there in the 1950s and 1960s before becoming head coach of the University of Tampa's now-defunct football program in 1968.

He led the Spartans to a No. 1 national ranking among small schools, but in 1971 left to take the head coaching reins at Miami and then Kentucky, where he won an SEC championship.

In 1985, Curci returned to Tampa to serve as UT's athletic director.

He was named the Arena Football League's coach of the year in 1991 after guiding the Tampa Bay Storm to an 8-2 record and ArenaBowl crown in the team's first season. But he retired the next year, saying the demands of the job were more than he'd anticipated. He later returned to coach the Cincinnati Rockers.

Through his years of coaching, Curci maintained interest in broadcasting. In the 1960s and 1970s, he worked for ABC television, and in yet another Tampa connection, he was a part of the Buccaneers' radio broadcast booth in the 1980s. He's worked NFL and Arena Football games too, but for the past few years, it's been strictly college ball.

His favorite game to call each year is the Army-Navy tilt.

"It's really not a game, it's just everything that's going on around it," he says. "Every year, you just feel so good about that game. It's really college football at its best."

Most television reporters would love the chance to be in the national spotlight and receive personal support from Ralph Nader.

But for Steve Wilson and Jane Akre, the husband-and-wife reporting team fired by Fox affiliate WTVT-Ch. 13 in 1998 for the content of one of their stories, the experience has been aggravating.

"When you work for a news organization and you're pressured to lie, the answer is not only no, but hell no," Wilson says.

"We certainly never set out to single-handedly change anything. We just resisted doing something that we knew was wrong, and we paid a hell of a price for it."

Fox has long maintained that it never asked Wilson and Akre to lie in their story about the harmful effects of dairy products from cattle treated with the artificial growth hormone BGH. The reporters claim Fox asked them to water down the story. Fox says the two refused to be objective.

The duo brought national credentials to Fox 13 when they were hired in 1996. Both had more than 20 years' experience -- Wilson was an Emmy-winning alumnus of Inside Edition, and Akre spent time on CNN.

Their suit against Fox led to months of litigation, highlighted by courtroom testimony from consumer advocate-turned-presidential candidate Ralph Nader.

The case turned out to be a victory for both Fox and the reporters -- in 2000, a jury awarded Akre $425,000, saying she was wrongfully terminated. Wilson was awarded nothing. Both Wilson and the station are appealing the verdict.

Since then, the two have had numerous speaking engagements about their experiences. They've also received a plethora of commendations for their work, including the $125,000 Goldman Environmental Prize.

Though Wilson still lives in Tampa, he now works at an ABC television affiliate in Detroit. He says the station is one of "a handful" still committed to doing solid investigative work. As for the commute to Detroit, he says, "It's not the greatest in the world."

Wilson still has harsh words for Fox about the suit.

"They've never disappointed me in being the poster child for some of the worst crap on television," he says.

"That's not to say there are not good people at some of those stations, and every once in a while, when it suits their needs, some good journalism doesn't get on the air there."

Akre has done some anchor work for Bay News 9, but her biggest work since leaving Fox was a contribution to the book Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press, in which she described her perspective on the BGH suit.

Wilson says the BGH story "still hasn't been adequately investigated."

"This is a human health story that will affect my kids and your kids and everybody else," he says. "In many ways, it's similar to tobacco."

If an appeals court rules in favor of Fox, though, Akre said it will be much tougher to do that kind of investigative work.

"It's a struggle, the worst fight of one's life," Wilson says. "And that's what they want it to be, because they want to discourage every other Steve Wilson and Jane Akre from standing up to them."

-- Jay Cridlin can be reached at 226-3374 or cridlin@sptimes.com.

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