Jack Falla went out on top. An early retirement. The press conference will be held Thursday. Anyone who had him in class or read his books knew he was the master of analyzing any aspect of life to an aspect of sports.

I received word of Prof. Falla’s most unexpected and premature passing on Sunday while watching the Patriots-Jets game. As a former student in his sports journalism course — the “8 a.m. death march” as he called it — there was a level of appropriateness in this. It’s been less than a week — five days, to be exact — since my final conversation with Prof. Falla. I mentioned to him that I’d like to take his Sport Information class in the spring; he said it fills up quickly. But then he realized that I’d be a second semester senior, meaning I’d “have a top draft pick.”

Later that day, I happened to walk by the room in which he was teaching. I stopped outside the door for a minute to hear what he was saying, and left excited at the prospect of taking another class with him. Students were his priority. On the final day of class last fall, he gave out his home phone number and offered himself as a reference. I was fortunate to have him in my corner on several occasions, and even when you didn’t ask he would vouch for you. Each time I asked him for a reference, I offered to send him something I wrote for his class to refresh his memory of me. He never took it; never needed it. He knew who I was. And he knew who each of his students were.

The first time I truly understood how spectacularly gifted prof. Falla was as a writer came as I read a piece he wrote that was set in his backyard rink. He described the warmth of the hot chocolate on a frosty winter evening, his wife Barbara by his side, his teenage children engaged in romance and skating on the ice with friends. The language pulled me in. I could see it. I could feel it. He painted the picture so eloquently. I read his recent work, Saved, which he was in the final stages of writing when I sat in his class. Every day he shared the trials and tribulations of writing a novel. A man with the utmost expectations, he often expressed doubt in his own writing. This was a man who wrote two Sports Illustrated cover stories on Wayne Gretzky. What could he possibly be worried about? To many students, it was Falla who deserved the moniker “The Great One.”

Jack Falla hung up his skates early Sunday morning. But everyone who knew him wishes he could be here today. The goalie was pulled from the net much too soon.

Christopher Moyer, COM ’09