Charlie Fiss found himself at the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Ind., in 1999 to accept the Bert McGrane Award for the late Field Scovell — the Cotton Bowl’s long-time team selection chairman — from the Football Writers Association of America.
“I was nervous and didn’t really know what to say,” Fiss, the Cotton B owl ’s vice president of communications, recalled this week. “Then they seated m e n ex t to Chris Schenkel and he couldn’t have been nicer.”
Schenkel, who had a lengthy broadcasting career that included calling college football games for ABC, helped put Fiss at ease.
“I thought, ‘Man, this is pretty cool,’ ” Fiss said. “ ‘You don’t have to deliver the Gettsburg Address. Just say thank you and sit down.’
“So I calmed down and had a great time.
“Little did I know that 17 years later I’d be accepting the award again, but this year it would be me that would be getting it. Pretty mind-boggling.”
Fiss, a Springdale native and Arkansas graduate, is this year’s winner of the Bert McGrane Award, which since 1974 has honored a member of the FWAA for distinguished service to the organization and college football.
It is among several awards being presented Monday in Tampa, Fla., in conjunction with the FWAA’s gathering for the Alabama-Clemson national championship game.
The award was established to honor McGrane, a Des Moines Register-Tribune sportswriter who was one of the FWAA’s founding members in 1941.
“There has never been a more deserving person for the Bert McGrane Award than Charlie,” said Wally Hall, sports editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the FWAA’s president in 2003. “It would take volumes of books to record all of his contributions to college football, but what makes this so special is Charlie has always worked out of the limelight, seeking no credit, and now he’s being honored on one of the biggest stages.”
Fiss, 64, has helped make the Cotton Bowl the gold standard for media relations and hospitality and has put together the FWAA’s membership directory for many years.
“Charlie Fiss perhaps more than anyone been part of the fabric of the FWAA for the last 30 years,” Steve Richardson, the FWAA’s executive director, said in a news release. “He nearly predates modern computers when it comes to putting together the FWAA print directory and mailing list.”
Richardson praised Fiss’ attention to detail.
“He is meticulous. Period. End of story,” Richardson said. “He stews over the mailing list and all parts of the directory he is responsible for and some that he is not.
“He has been a champion of the FWAA in terms of what is provided during his bowl week — access to players and coaches and maintaining strict standards of decorum in the press box itself.
“For years, the Cotton Bowl has been an example of how it should be done. He puts together a bowl operations staff that is second to none.”
Fiss began working with the Cotton Bowl in 1984, when he was a media relations official for the Southwest Conference office. The Cotton Bowl hired him on a full-time basis in 1993.
Before going to the SWC, Fiss worked in Arkansas’ sports information office. He also worked in radio, including being the voice of the Springdale High School football broadcasts.
“To be recognized by the football writers for this award is just a tremendous honor,” Fiss said. “It’s really hard to believe.”