Twenty years ago, Rex Hoggard was only 27 and had been working in the Orlando Sentinel sports department for just a few months. Little did he know he was walking into a thunderstorm involving the city's basketball icon.
"I felt like public enemy No. 1," Hoggard said.
Hoggard was assigned to write a story on the results of a Sentinel Sound-Off poll. As part of the feature, editors posed a provocative question for readers, who could call into an answering machine – hey, it was 1996 – to vote "yes" or "no" and also leave their opinion.