Forget six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Woody Paige’s life is six degrees of Elvis Presley.

“I was born in Memphis and lived in Lauderdale Courts a few doors down from the Presley’s and then we moved behind Graceland in a subdivision called ‘Graceland.’ I would play flag football on the grounds of the (Elvis’) house. I knew the guard at the gate, so he would let me in and I would visit with Elvis’ grandmother.”

Paige, now a national columnist, author and a regular on ESPN’s Around the Horn, says he always loved journalism, but fell into his career.

“I never searched for these opportunities and I didn’t ask for them. I didn’t ask to be on talk radio or TV. I’m just a poor kid from Memphis who got lucky,” says Paige.

Paige’s journalism career started in the third grade at Cherokee Elementary when his teacher asked him to write the news for the Cherokee Chit-Chat. His career took off in high school when he wrote for the Whitehaven Press, a weekly newspaper covering events in the Memphis neighborhood. His writing style and honesty attracted many readers, and Paige saw his writing could make an impact.

“I covered a Whitehaven football game one Friday night and noticed during the National Anthem that people were standing, but there was no flag,” Paige recalls. “So I wrote about there not being a flag at the football game, and next week, there was a flag.”

He left the Whitehaven Press after high school to attend the University of Tennessee at Knoxville where he wrote for the Knoxville Journal and The Daily Beacon, UT-Knoxville’s college newspaper.

In 1968, Paige returned to Memphis to work for The Commercial Appeal where he was assigned to write columns on the Memphis Zoo for every Sunday paper.

“I would go to the zoo and ask the zookeeper what was going on,” Paige remembers. “One Sunday, the only thing he had for me was the selling of a baby hippo. I took this story and wrote it in an Animal Farm-eske way from the view of the baby hippo.”

Paige named the hippo “Angus,” after then city editor and eventually chief editor of the Commercial Appeal, Angus McEachran. The next day, McEachran contacted Paige to tell him he loved the column and it was too bad that it would be the last he would write for the paper. Soon after, Paige was summoned to the chief-editor’s office.

“I thought I was fired,” said Paige. “Angus loved the column, but told me the editor would hate it and he would fire me. It turns out he did not fire me. Instead, he moved me to sports.”

Paige covered all sports including the Memphis Tigers, Memphis Blues baseball team and the American Basketball Association’s Memphis Pros and Memphis Tams. It was in the ABA where Paige got his television start.

“WMC Channel 5 carried regional Pros games and asked me to be a television sports analyst. I sat alongside Terry Lee who did play-by-play, and I was horrible,” Paige laughed.

He recalls a story where no one told him the producer would be talking into his ear. Paige heard what he called “The voice of God” telling him to wrap it up in one minute and started answering him on the air. They went to commercial and the producer had to tell him that it was indeed him, and not God, who was speaking. Paige eventually found his bearings as the Pros sports analyst and loved working on the games.

In 1974, Paige moved from the Commercial Appeal to the Atlanta Constitution, and eventually made his way to his current residence in Denver where he wrote for the Rocky Mountain News before spending 35 years at the Denver Post. He currently writes a couple of columns a month for the Gazette. He enjoys his life, but he may not have left Memphis had a deal for a newspaper gone through.

“I approached a friend of mine during college who was an investor and pitched him a plan to buy the Whitehaven Press,” Paige remembers. “We scheduled a meeting with the owners and offered them 400,000 dollars for the paper. They wanted a million dollars, so we walked away. Had that deal gone through, I would have retired from the Whitehaven Press.”

Paige’s experience on television with the Pros and his experience hosting a sports radio talk show on WHBQ in Memphis led to more opportunities in Denver. Paige did television and radio. He would also do sports segments for The Today Show out of Denver. Paige’s frank, direct and sometimes-comedic style caught the eye of ESPN. In 2003, Paige briefly moved to New York to host Cold Pizza, a morning sports talk show on ESPN2. During that time he became a regular analyst on a new show, Around the Horn.

“They asked me to be ‘the center square’ Hollywood Squares person on this show,” Paige says. “I started doing that and 17 years later, I’m still going.”

Most people know Paige from Around the Horn, but they also know him by his trademark chalkboard that hangs in the background with a different saying each day. How did the chalkboard shtick come about? Did it come to Paige in a dream one night? Did ESPN come up with the idea? Nope. Just like practically everything else in Paige’s life, the chalkboard came by chance.

“We had this bare studio at Cold Pizza with an empty bookcase,” Paige recalls. “One day my assistant and I were walking through Times Square and I mentioned we needed something to go on that bookcase. He went to Toys-R-Us and brought back this chalkboard and magnetic letters. I used that and eventually got rid of the magnetic letters and just wrote on it. The chalkboard has been with me ever since.”

Paige still has all of his sayings, more than 10,000 of them, saved. He turned many of them into a book and has another “Chalkboard book” coming out this Christmas. Paige writes about 25 sayings a week, some he uses, some he doesn’t. He writes them down whenever they come to him.

“I will be out to eat and one will come to me. I’ll write it down on a napkin and take it with me. I still have all my notepads and napkins with the chalkboard sayings,” Paige laughs.

In today’s politically correct world, Paige likes to tow-the-line with his chalkboard sayings, but he does have rules for what goes on the board.

“I only make fun of myself,” says Paige. “I don’t want to make fun of anyone else because you don’t know what people are going through. No one has ever told me I couldn’t write a saying on the board and I’m proud of that. I like to make people think and chuckle a bit with them. Fans have them on their cellphones and will come up and show me their favorite ones. It makes you feel good when they do that.”

Paige credits his writing style from living in Memphis and the south. Some of his greatest times as a journalist were covering Memphis State Football games during the Billy Fletcher years. He says the south is not as edgy and people look at things from a different perspective. They are friendly and have etiquette, even when they are criticizing someone.

“All the great writers come out of the South and I’m not one of them,” Paige chuckles. “The Southern dialect is very pure because it is close to a true Old-English accent. This accent gives southern authors a great colloquialism for their writings.”

Paige is excited for Memphis and the things the city is doing to reinvent itself. He is most proud of the use of the river, including the condos on the bluff and Big River Crossing.

“Memphis is where rural people came for a better life. It’s nice to see it’s making a comeback,” Paige says proudly.

Paige believes Memphis is also making a comeback with the university. He was thrilled to hear about the hiring of Penny Hardaway as the University of Memphis’ (Paige has a hard time not calling it Memphis State) head men’s basketball coach.

“Penny embodies Memphis and I think he is going to do extremely well,” Paige adds.

He hopes the Memphis Tigers basketball team and the Memphis Grizzles NBA team get back to their previous successes and Memphis Tigers football can continue their progress as a prominent team.

Every time Paige has a chance to talk about Memphis sports on ESPN, he loves to promote everything about Grind City. His affinity for Memphis can be summed up in something Larry Finch once told him:

“Memphis never leaves your heart, mind and soul.”

Like this article and subscribe to the 901 Connection to stay up-to-date on new and exciting content about Memphis!

Follow Bret: @bjbilbrey on Twitter and Instagram

Photo Credits: YouTube; The Whitehaven Press