I don’t know how many times I’m asked this question – “are you going to miss doing sports” – and yet I do not have a satisfactory answer. Going into my third month behind the news desk and I have yet to really miss out on anything significant in sports. I’ll be honest. I do not miss training camp. I attended well over one hundred Steeler practices last season and if you have seen one, you have pretty much seen them all.

But right now, Sally and JB are working behind the scenes on our first “Steelers Primetime” of the season. For those of you who don’t know, “Primetime” is WTAE-TV hour-long pre-game show prior to any Steelers game aired in primetime on channel 4. We usually do it from the field and it’s almost all unscripted.

For 11 years, Sally and I have served as co-hosts and the program has won numerous awards. Its how Sally and I really got to know one another and how we began to build a working relationship and a friendship that has lasted longer than any other I have known here in Pittsburgh.

But next week, that relationship officially ends – at least on television. Sally and JB will co-host the program from Philadelphia before the Steelers and Eagles clash in pre-season football. It will be at that moment – watching Sally and JB together on the field in Philly – that it will finally hit me that I am no longer in sports. It will be difficult to watch because I am so proud of that program and what it has become. I will truly miss it.

The reality checks will continue as we go deep into the football season. Not being at the Steelers first game – a primetime contest with the Miami Dolphins and their first home game as world champions. Then, the first high school football Friday will really test my resolve. Nothing gave me greater pleasure than to be on the air at 11pm giving our viewers 15 minutes of high school football highlights and all the scores. It was a crazy night and often I wondered if we would get everything on the air in time. Now, I will be like many of you – sitting at home and watching the highlights instead of being there bringing you the action.

Would I trade my current spot in the mornings to return to sports? No. My time as a sports director was a phase in my life and that phase is over. But it doesn’t mean that I no longer care about the world of sports – and it will be difficult to sit there and be on the sidelines rather than in the thick of the game.

I don’t think I will need professional help but, as all you smokers out there know, it’s tough to quit cold turkey.