It is more important to get it right than to get it fast.

That is one of the most important tenets of journalism. For almost 17 years, I have done my job with that sentence being at the top of the list of things that is a reflex, not something that I need to be reminded of.

The problem for “Dusty Sloan, football fan” was that I didn’t always live by the automatic credo that “Dusty Sloan, journalist” always has. Confessions of a converted football realist.