My Two Cents: Hello, Nashville, It's Good to Be Home

New AllTitans.com publisher Tom Brew says hello to Nashville, finally coming home to his family roots after an award-winning journalism career in Florida and Indiana. Here is his first column for the Sports Illustrated/FanNation site, with plans for his strong lineup of reporters and staff for the coming year, and links to new social media sites.

NASHVILLE — I'm one of the lucky ones when it comes to work and a career. When I was eight years old, I knew two things with certainty. I loved sports, and I loved to write. 

In the third grade while growing up in northwest Indiana, my career path was already set. I wanted to write about sports for a living. And I had a plan, even as a little boy.

Thankfully, it's all worked out. Sure, there's been some hiccups along the way in the newspaper business, a dying industry that's been tough to navigate. I've had to reinvent myself a few times during four-plus decades, but for the past four years, I've been doing exactly what I wanted at Sports Illustrated/FanNation — and with great success. It's been fun, and rewarding, in so many ways.

And now, here in February 2023, it's come full circle for me. I am your new publisher of AllTitans.com, our website on the Sports Illustrated/FanNation network that covers all things Titans.

For me, this is coming home. My Brew family roots are more than a century old in this wonderful and transforming city. My grandfather was born here and I literally have hundreds of relatives in and around middle Tennessee. I spent my summers as a child visiting here every summer after my baseball seasons were over. I've visited on Acklen Avenue, rode bikes with my cousins up and down Arrowwood Drive and learned at a very young age that there are all sorts of Old Hickory Boulevards.

I stayed home for college at Indiana University, and worked most of my professional life in Florida or Indiana. Tennessee was always were it started though, so all these years later, it's great to be back home.

I've worked a long time dealing with the NFL in many of my stops. I've covered or coordinated dozens of Super Bowls and wrote or edited stories about several hundreds games, in Tampa, Indianapolis and beyond.

And when the opportunity came up this month to take over the Titans' site, I jumped at the chance when my bosses offered it to me — and for good reason. Lots of them actually.

It's the NFL, for one, and I love the weekly drama that plays out, and the stories and columns that are worth telling. And I love that it's THIS team, the Titans, because with all the changes afoot, 2023 is going to be a very interesting season. There are a ton of great storylines already, and it's only February.

Plus, I'm crazy excited about living here in Nashville. I've found a wonderful place in Franklin, and my brother lives northeast of town, too. And, as I mentioned, I've got several hundreds cousins and such already here. The cross between my professional life and personal can't get much stronger.

Here's the one interesting thing about Nashville, though. It's really the only city in America that I could have moved to where I'm NOT the best journalist in my family. I might not even be second or third.

It's not even close, because my uncle was John Seigenthaler, the long-time publisher of the Tenneseean, among many other wonderful things he did in his amazing lifetime. His mother, Mary, and my grandfather, William Brew, were brothers and sisters. 

I have — or had, because many of them are gone now — such an amazing collection of aunts and uncles. I idolized my Uncle John — that's what I called him, even though he was technically my dad's first cousin, and my second or third, depending on how you guys draw that family tree. He always gave me great newspaper advice during my career, for which I'm forever grateful.

He always told me to ''write as much as you can and work with people who can make you better.'' I always did that. When I told him I had a chance to go to the St. Petersburg Times — constantly a top-10 paper in the country back in those days — for a summer during my last year of college, he strongly endorsed it. He also talked about me coming to Nashville when I graduated, because I was having such a good college career. I liked that idea.

Six weeks into my internship in St. Petersburg, they offered me a full-time job. My first call was to my Uncle John, simply for validation. I loved it there — it was a glorious time for newspapers back then, with a staff full of legends — but I also had to tell him that meant Nashville — and working for him — was out.

He told me how great that newspaper was, and how terrific the editors were from top to bottom. He was happy for me, and he was always complimentary of how my career went through the years.

My Nashville uncles were the biggest collection of bold personalities you could ever imagine in one family. They were all exceptional storytellers, and they could light up a room. And when they were all together, oh my. If I ever put together a list of the 10 days I've laughed the hardest in my life, many of them would have been while spending time with them.

I remember one time in the mid-1980s, my uncle — my dad's only brother — died suddenly in his mid-50s. It was just a week before my wedding in Florida, and the family was devastated. Many of my cousins were already in Florida, but we all flew back to Indiana.

It was a sad, sad day, but when we got back to my aunt's house after the funeral, the stories started to flow and everyone was laughing and hooting and hollering. There were drinks involved for the adults, of course, being the Irish family that we are. My uncles sucked all the sadness out of the room while their greatness. I have an eidetic memory, and I can still picture it, all of them sitting around my aunt's dining room table, laughing till we cried tears of joy.

That was family at its finest.

We lost my Uncle John in 2014, just shy of his 87th birthday. I will think of him often, now that I'm back ''home.'' There are wonderful markers around town from the legacy he left behind, the John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge and the John Seigenthaler Center at Vanderbilt, and others. I can't wait to swing by those places again, too. 

I say all this because I want you to know that being here in Nashville and providing the best coverage of the Titans possible for all of you really matters to me. It matters a lot. This is your hometown NFL football team, and I know how much you care.

I am assembling a wonderful team of reporters to help do this the right way. I am in my fifth year with Sports Illustrated/FanNation, and I've had a lot of success during that time because I have a good feel for what readers want with their teams. I'm honored to be a top publisher with our brand.

We're going to bring quality journalism to you, all day and every day. I'm going to write many stories myself, including my always popular ''My Two Cents'' columns. I will also manage and edit this solid staff, and coordinate our marketing and advertising ventures with Becky Rigel, who handles the business side of things for me.

We'll have all the news and views for you, and a lot of video and podcasts and interviews as well. There also will be plenty of first-class opinion. We're going to be out in the community often, and we'll have platforms for you to chat with us, too.

What's best about our AllTitans.com site is that it's all free. There is no paywall or subscription model. Bookmark our site and come visit often. We have Facebook and Twitter accounts set up as well — see the links below — and we'll post every story we do there so you won't miss a thing. We'll have an email newsletter put together in a few weeks, too.

I'll introduce my staff to you soon. I think you'll be impressed with all we do, and you'll see some recognizable names and faces.

It's good to be home, y'all. I'm looking forward to being with you so much. I'll be doing double duty for a few months — I have to finish my college basketball season — but I'm locked in here now and ready to have a fun season with the Titans.

Let's go!

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