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."