Steve Wieberg, who has been a sports reporter with USA TODAY since the newspaper’s inception in 1982, has announced his retirement from sportswriting to become a high school English and Journalism teacher in Lawson, MO., where he lives today.  He has resided in the KC area since 1989.
     The final sporting event he covered for the Gannett-owned paper was the Major League Baseball All-Star game held this week in Kansas City.
     Wieberg discussed his journalism career on KCSP’s “Fescoe in the Morning” today on 610 AM hosted by Josh Klingler and Sean McDowell.  (LISTEN)
      The person he is going to miss dealing with on a regular basis? Kansas basketball coach Bill Self.  Best NCAA basketball game he covered?  The 1985 nailbiter between Georgetown and Villanova (won by underdog Villanova 66-64). 
     Ironically, the most memorable story he says he has ever covered was the devastating tornado that tore through Joplin, MO., on May 22, 2011. He had covered non-sports stories previously such as the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Hurricane Katrina and tornadoes in Oklahoma City and Kansas, but said the devastation in Joplin was unlike anything he had ever witnessed.
   A University of Missouri Journalism School graduate, Wieberg has focused on covering college football, basketball and the NCAA with USA Today and won numerous journalism awards.  He covered 16 national championship football games, every basketball Final Four since 1983 and seven Summer and Winter Olympics. 
      Before joining USA Today Wieberg was a sports reporter and Sunday sports editor at the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader from 1991-92 and previously worked five years at the Mexico (Mo.) Ledger.
     Wieberg was selected by College Sports magazine as one of the “50 Most Influential People in College Sports” in 1995 and ’96.  In 2007 the the Chronicle of Higher Education named him one of the “10 Most Powerful People in College Sports.” In 2008 he was elected to the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame.