Stu Whitney: 35 years of touching nerves in Sioux Falls

Happy Hour with John Gaskins

Stu Whitney's high school football team celebrated a big win by gleefully ripping to shreds a newspaper column he wrote claiming they weren't worthy of the playoffs.

He ended up being right.

The head football coach at Michigan State invited Stu into his office to berate him at the top of his lungs and call him every nasty name you could imagine after he unvieled some unsavory information about the program.

But George Perles didn't deny his reporting.

The Sioux Falls Stampede coach literally got in his face, point blank, after a game to intimidate him after a column about how that coach should be fired.

And he eventually was.

Stu Whitney's words — in his own words, at times caustic and controversial — had a uniquely strong and memorable impact on those he wrote about as a sportswriter, at-large columnist, investigative journalist, and author of a fictional memoir called "The Covid Chronicles" that tackled the way leaders in Sioux Falls and South Dakota handled the pandemic.

Now, "SuFu Stu" is embarking on a second novel, this time a non-fiction about World War II aviator and former Washington High, Augustana, USD, and O'Gorman coach Bob Burns. He also has another script in the about South Dakota and its people, one that won't be in book form, a script he had yet to announce...

...until now, in a 90-minute sit-down with Happy Host John Gaskins from Gateway Lounge. Stu looks back on his 35-years in Sioux Falls — a stretch piled full of colorful characters, stories, columns, confrontations, and, ultimately, massive critical acclaim from readers — whether they liked him or not.