David Newton never made it to law school.
The ESPN Panthers beat reporter announced Thursday that he is retiring after 20 years with the network and 45 years in the business, saying he will wake up from hip replacement surgery ready to start a new chapter. The plan coming out of Wofford College in 1981 was six months off, then law school. Forty-five days later, a small newspaper in Gaffney, South Carolina, offered him a sports editor job.
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He took it and never looked back.
The career that followed took him through Tiger Woods winning his first Masters, John Elway winning his first Super Bowl, Jimmy Johnson winning his first of seven NASCAR championships, and the Carolina Panthers reaching the Super Bowl twice. Newton covered the Panthers’ entire run from expansion franchise to Super Bowl contender, from their first seasons in Charlotte through the Cam Newton era, the Steve Smith era, the Luke Kuechly era, and whatever came after.
Newton joined ESPN in 2006 as part of its NASCAR coverage — a beat he knew well from his years at The State newspaper, where he covered both the sport and the Panthers — before switching to the Panthers full-time in 2013 as part of the network’s NFL Nation expansion, where he spent the next 12-plus years of his career.
His tenure was not without friction. Last fall, Newton drew criticism after asking Panthers wide receiver Xavier Legette whether his father would be rooting for the Cowboys, apparently forgetting that Legette’s father died in 2019, a fact Newton had previously written about. The moment was amplified by Panthers fans who had a longstanding complicated relationship with his coverage, including a Change.org petition that had been circulating for years. Newton apologized directly to Legette and the Panthers organization, calling it an innocent but hurtful mistake.
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Newton is heading to Asheville to build an art gallery with his partner, Babette Reynolds. He acknowledged the new chapter might not last 45 years. Then again, he noted, he never expected the last one to.
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