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Briggs: New BG AD began as a small-town newspaper reporter, and what a story he can tell

BOWLING GREEN — A family leaves their native South Africa over a profound moral struggle with the evil of apartheid. A young violinist discovers football as a high school senior and wills his way to a Division I scholarship. A small-town newspaper reporter makes it big in another profession.

They’re the ingredients of an irresistible narrative.

And in another life, the subject of the story — new Bowling Green athletic director Derek van der Merwe — might have written it himself.

“Did you know I used to be in your business?” van der Merwe asked me the other day.