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Tom Duddleston – University of Arizona, Sports Information Director (Retired)

CoSIDA Lifetime Achievement Award

by Tim Tessalone – University of Southern California, Consultant and Sports Information Director (retired)/CoSIDA Special Awards Committee

There’s only one Tom Duddleston, the 2022 CoSIDA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient who retired in 2013 after 31 years in Arizona’s sports information office.
 
Check that. Actually, there are two. His late father Tom Sr. was a revered editor at the Tucson Citizen and also a journalism professor at the University of Arizona. Son Tom Jr. (our CoSIDA honoree) was equally beloved, but far more one-of-a-kind than his dad.
 
Take his press box public address commentary. A “self tacklization,” when the quarterback falls down untouched, is one example of the many Duddleston-isms.
 
“Keeping stats is a serious job, but I tried to have fun with it,” Duddleston noted.
 
 
Dudd (nobody calls him Tom) never drove to work at UA. He lived five blocks from the Tucson campus (and still does), so he would walk or ride his bike.
 
Even his path to the sports information field was atypical. He was a house painter and worked in the concrete business before somehow segueing into the media as a night police beat reporter. He then worked in the late 1970s in UA’s public information office, where he sometimes covered the Wildcat football team.
 
In 1983, Duddleston became an assistant in UA’s sports information office. He took over the SID spot in 1993, helping chronicle the championship exploits of, among others, Lute Olson’s men’s basketball team, Mike Candera’s softball squads and Rick LaRose’s golfers, as well as Dick Tomey’s “Desert Swarm” football teams. 
 
“I’m glad I worked when I did, during the hey days of UA Athletics,” he said.
 
Duddleston has been connected to UA since he was 10 years old. He started going to Wildcat games in 1960, paying $1 for kids’ tickets as part of the “Knothole Gang.”
 
“I’ve been around here a long time,” he said. “Wildcat Athletics is in my blood. I went to school here, I worked here. My kids grew up on campus and went to the games, and my wife, Beth, became a volunteer in the press box, so I was able to see my family more than most do in this profession. My dad would walk four blocks from his house and sit in the back of the press box. UA was very good to us.”

In 2012, UA Athletics presented Duddleston with the prestigious John Button Salmon Award, given to coaches and administrators for exemplary leadership and service to the University. He also was made an honorary Arizona letterwinner.
 
In 2000, the Tucson Weekly named him the “Best UA Administrator,” writing: “He's got a great sense of humor, a mind like a steel trap, and a calm demeanor perfectly suited to a hectic job. His running press-box commentary during UA football games is absolutely priceless.”
 
“Dudd started in the era of the Underwood typewriter and went out in the age of digital media, as fluent as anyone in the business,” renowned Arizona Daily Star columnist Greg Hansen wrote upon Dudd’s retirement. “(His was) a job well done…He did his work and got out of the way…He sat down, shut up and was a company man among company men. He led by example, with the driest sense of humor on the planet, and gained respect because he would not engage in pettiness or disloyalty.”

“He served the UA well and faithfully,” wrote the Tucson Citizen’s Anthony Gimino in 2013. “He was a pro’s pro...Dudd was like God: He helped those who helped themselves. He never gave you anything. But if you asked the right question, you got the right answer. His fairness was unquestioned.”

"We had a mission and in my mind that mission was cooperation," Duddleston told the Daily Star in 2013. "We were the official record of UA sports. It's not a glamorous thing, but it's an important thing."

Being mentored by Dudd was special (“I enjoyed teaching them how to do the work,” he said). Many went on to big things, like new Women’s Sports Foundation chief executive officer Danette Leighton or Detroit Pistons senior vice president of public relations Kevin Grigg.

"He created a family-like atmosphere in the SID office and made it a place you wanted to be," Brett Hansen, a one-time assistant under Duddleston and now senior director of communication and marketing for Bally Sports Arizona, told the Daily Star. 
 
Remembered sportswriter Gimino, himself a former sports information intern under Duddleston: “Dudd gave us loads of freedom, responsibility, opportunity. That’s his style…His ’60s-era free-spirit vibe, (he is) as comfortable in his own skin as anybody I’ve ever known.”
 
These days, Dudd still helps the UA football and basketball stat crews and assists the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame committee. He plays some golf, travels, reads, gardens, does home improvement projects and spends part of Tucson’s hot summer vacationing in San Diego.
 
“Retirement is good,” he said. “I don’t miss the work of being an SID. I still have many friends at UA Athletics and in the media and I stay involved at the university, but it’s nice to not be in the pressure cooker anymore.”
 
His Lifetime Achievement Award left him humbled. “I’m most impressed by who else is getting that award and that CoSIDA considered me among them,” he said.
 
Dudd’s retirement party in 2013 was attended by local media, UA staff, and former interns and co-workers, and even three members of in-state rival Arizona State’s media relations staff. It’s not easy for a Sun Devil to celebrate a Wildcat, unless it’s Tom Duddleston Jr.