James Furman Bisher (November 4, 1918 – March 18, 2012) was an American newspaper sportswriter and columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in Atlanta, Georgia.
Early life and education
Bisher was born in Denton, North Carolina. His family were descended from German immigrants. Bisher's parents named him after a regionally known Baptist minister, James Furman. After initially attending Furman University, Bisher attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a manager for the North Carolina Tar Heels football team.
Early career
After graduating from UNC in 1938, he became the editor of the Lumberton Voice newspaper in Lumberton, North Carolina at the age of 20. In an era when most other sports writers refused to acknowledge auto racing, he also covered the first stock car cup race in 1949—what would later become known as NASCAR.
He became embroiled in a national controversy in 1962 after he contributed to an article for The Saturday Evening Post which alleged that the University of Georgia's former head football coach and then-current athletic director Wally Butts and coach Bear Bryant of the University of Alabama conspired to fix the outcome of a college football game. Bisher conducted several interviews for the story that were ultimately not used in the final published version of the article. He is a member of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame, the University of North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame, the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame, the International Golf Writers Hall of Fame, the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame, and the Atlanta Press Club Hall of Fame. He was chosen the Georgia Sportswriter of the Year on sixteen occasions, and recognized by the Associated Press for the best Georgia story of the year over twenty times. He estimated that he had written 15,000 daily sports columns, 1,200 magazine articles and more than a dozen books.
Until the age of 90, Bisher held seniority over the hundreds of golf reporters and other sports journalists who descend on Augusta, Georgia, each April for the Masters Tournament. During the 2006 tournament, The Golf Channel profiled Bisher as the "dean" of Masters journalists. Bisher covered every Kentucky Derby since 1950, and every Super Bowl but the first.
Death
Bisher died from a heart attack on March 18, 2012. He was survived by his second wife Lynda and two of his three sons from his first marriage.