After graduation, Olney began covering baseball in 1989, as the Nashville Banner's beat reporter assigned to the Triple-A Nashville Sounds. While in Nashville, he formed a close relationship with Don Meyer, head coach of the men's basketball program at David Lipscomb University. He later worked at the San Diego Union-Tribune and The Baltimore Sun. He arrived at the New York Times in 1997 and in his first year won an Associated Press award.
During one of his first assignments in Nashville, the Sounds hosted the Columbus Clippers who, at the time, were the AAA affiliate of the New York Yankees. Olney almost had a minor confrontation with a Yankee prospect at the time known more for his football play, Deion Sanders. Olney had attempted to do a piece on Sanders, but was blown off. In return, Olney wrote what he called later in his career an unflattering piece on Sanders. Sanders replied to Olney by writing on a baseball "Keep writing like that your whole life and you'll always be a loser."[6]
How Lucky You Can Be: The Story of Coach Don Meyer
In 2010, Olney wrote How Lucky You Can Be: The Story of Coach Don Meyer, an account of how a car crash and cancer diagnosis affected the life of the highly accomplished college basketball coach. In 2013, Olney delivered the May commencement speech at Northern State University, where Meyer coached until 2010, and was still a member of the faculty until his death on May 18, 2014.[citation needed][8]
^ abcAbrami, Alex (August 1, 2010). "Buster Olney's childhood traces back to Vermont". Burlington Free Press. Archived from the original on September 24, 2014. Retrieved March 26, 2017. Olney...was born in Washington, D.C., but as the 46-year-old occasionally points out in his daily column—he grew up on a dairy farm in Randolph Center.
