"All holidays can be good times.""Almost every time I am in a lectureship on a college campus, young people will say, If there is a God and if he is a loving and merciful God, how do you explain the problems of suffering and death and all the tragedies that happen to people?""Between 1910 and 1950 approximately 350 lives of Jesus were published in the English language alone.""Christians were instructed to serve others, and the thanksgiving was for the grace of God and the fact that God offered a way for man to return to a positive relationship with Him.""Christmas is the antithesis of Thanksgiving. Christmas is pretty much a man-made holiday.""Could the one whom Christians worship be merely a mythological creation, or is he real? These questions have exercised many great minds and have been the dominant issue in New Testament studies during this century.""I believe any question that man can ask has a reasonable answer-at least an answer that is as consistent with God's existence as it is in opposition to God's existence.""I guess none of us like to look back in our lives to a time when we made poor judgments and foolish mistakes.""In the surface of the paper there is only length and width-there is no such thing as thickness.""Is it possible that the portrait of the divine Son of God is an exaggeration, at best, or a complete fabrication, at worst, of the original Jesus?""It is my fervent hope and prayer that by exposing my mistakes and by pointing out the things that were a part of my early life, some who might be following the same paths might not make those same mistakes.""Just as a puppy can be more of a challenge than a gift, so too can the holidays.""Not only are Christians writing about Jesus, but also Communists, Jews, atheists and agnostics are taking up their pens to paint a portrait of Jesus.""Since I was an atheist for many years and came to believe in God through my studies in science, it frustrated me to see students and parents who viewed faith and science as enemies.""Thanksgiving is a season that is very much in accord with the themes and teachings of Jesus Christ.""Thanksgiving is a time when the world gets to see just how blessed and how workable the Christian system is. The emphasis is not on giving or buying, but on being thankful and expressing that appreciation to God and to one another.""The denominational world tries to pressure its members to focus on the birth of Christ, but in doing so layers of guilt are imposed, and competition gets complicated as one Christmas program tries to outdo the other.""The emphasis on the birth of Christ tends to polarize our pluralistic society and create legal and ethnic belligerence.""The purpose of this study is to offer a logical, practical, pragmatic proof of the existence of God from a purely scientific perspective.""There is no racial or ethnic involvement in Thanksgiving, and people who may be very distant from the Christian system can see the beauty and the positive spirit that comes from the holiday.""There was no instruction to be thankful that the Christians were special people, chosen people. There was no nationalistic, political or ethnic superiority to be thankful for.""Was the real Jesus of history one and the same as the Christ of faith whom we read about in the New Testament and worship in the church? Was Jesus really raised from the dead? Is he really the divine Lord of lords?""We are assuming that we exist, that there is reality, and that the matter of which we are made is real.""What is the origin of God?"
John Clayton, born John Travis Clayton, began covering sports while still a student at Churchill Area High School (since merged into Woodland Hills High School) in suburban Pittsburgh. Starting with the Pittsburgh Steelers' training camp, he covered the team in twice-weekly dispatches in the St. Marys, Pennsylvania Daily Press.
Clayton went on to attend Duquesne University, where he played football He later transferred to Clemson where he was an All American Quarterback and covered sports for the school's paper, ]. Upon graduating in 1976, he began writing for the Pittsburgh Press.
In May 1978, Clayton was sent to cover a Steelers mini-camp in place of the Press' regular Steelers beat writer, Glenn Sheeley. While there he discovered and reported a rules violation which would cost the team a draft pick. The affair was dubbed "Shouldergate" by Clayton. Clayton became persona non grata for some time in his hometown for his role in the affair.
Clayton eventually worked his way up to become the Steelers beat writer at the Press, before leaving the paper in 1986. He moved across the country and began covering the Seattle Seahawks for the Tacoma News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington. It was at this time that he began appearing in NFL segments on Seattle sports radio station KJR on host Nancy Donnelan's program "The Fabulous Sports Babe". When Donnelan's show was picked up by ESPN for national syndication Clayton came along as an NFL correspondent.
ESPN
In 1995, John Travis Clayton joined ESPN as a reporter and later added to his duties a weekly radio show during the NFL offseason. He hosted the show with former NFL quarterback Sean Salisbury; the show included "Four Downs," a debate with Salisbury over current NFL issues. Their debates often became quite heated, with Salisbury referring to Clayton as the "Cryptkeeper" and "Mr. Peabody", mocking his geeky/decrepit appearance and voice, and Clayton responding by calling Salisbury "Mr. Backup" based on his limited playing time during his NFL career. There is debate as to seriousness of the animosity between Salisbury and Clayton.
Radio programs
Clayton remained a frequent contributor to KJR , and also hosts its "Sports Saturday" show on Saturday mornings. He is a regular caller to sports-talk radio stations around the country. Because of the transition to all-sports of KIRO Seattle, Clayton moved his show to the new ESPN station.
Awards and honors
Clayton received the Dick McCann Memorial Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2007. This distinction puts him in the "writer's wing" of the Hall of Fame.
He was also inducted into the sports hall of fame of his alma mater, Duquesne University, in 2001.
