The Good Life

I decided years ago that sports journalism was the way to go. I watch the news every day and I watch sports news like 5,000,000 times more than that. It is just what I love.

So I got into it. Began to learn how the job is actually done. Now, as Sports Editor of my university's newspaper, I rack my brain day in and day out trying to figure out how on earth the very small group of interested sports writers I have working for me are going to cover the enormous amount of sports happening at UCO. My first semester as Sports Editor was a rush. I did a ton of work because there were only two of us. This semester, there are four. This results in me spending more time being an editor than actually going to a basketball game and covering it live.

(Photo by: Aliki Dyer)

Until tonight.

Tonight I covered two games live, tweeting my butt off and writing a story about a game while it was still in progress. I rushed to the coaches office immediately following the game for an interview and published my account of the night's festivities withing 20 minutes of the final buzzer sounding on another Broncho loss. I LOVED IT!
 
I haven't had the opportunity to do this almost the entire spring semester. And do I ever miss it.

I want to send out an order to anybody who stumbles upon this blog and may or may not find themselves in the situation I fell into. Enjoy every second of it because in a very short period of time you will spend all of your time re-writing cover letters and tailoring your resume to different companies desires. You will be preparing for that huge summer internship and your brain will be working double overtime trying to find a way to make it in this world.

Covering sports is what I love and if doing what I did tonight was the way my life turned out, then I would have to say that would be a good life.

Memories In The Snow

With the snow blowing in this week, my excitement grew and stayed at a recent high. I love the snow. I embrace it. Even when every weather channel is insisting nobody step foot out of their house, I do. Because why wouldn't you? Why would anybody not cease the opportunity to go outside and make a snow angel or have a snowball fight with their friends and family. Maybe try and make a snowman taller than yourself or even get crazy and call every person in the neighborhood and play a game of football.
This is my favorite memory of the snow. Records, not my memory, indicate a blizzard blew through Utica, New York on the day I was born. The snowfall in the western part of that state is regular and each winter comes in bunches. I have plenty of good memories of that. But, as a young kid, calling every other kid whose phone number I knew and telling them to meet us at the football field for a game in the snow is absolutely and easily the best memory of the snow I have.
Walking around campus with snow all over the place caused a yearning for that childhood memory I haven't felt probably since I was a child. What I would do for one afternoon of football with my brothers in the snow followed by a host of the local pre-teens gathered around the heater vent in my house waiting for someone to learn how to make hot chocolate.

Dave Rhea

I loved what Dave had to say about embracing the digital age. He made so many great points about how to use it and the importance of using it.

I also really liked his blog hub for The Journal Record. The idea that all of the journalists at the newspaper each had their own blog was terrific. Writers all need to have their own voice out there and it is extremely important for them to do that. It is also important for writers to... Write! Yup, I said it. Writers need to be writing.

If a reporter has one story per week published in the paper and then has two blogs per week posted on the publications website, it is only going to be a matter of time before his writing picks up. Writing the news story will become much easier the more a reporter writes and to have all of the writers blogging regularly, and of course related to their beats, is genius.

Baseball Season Is Coming

Pitchers and catchers have reported to spring training, so what will this season bring us in baseball.

The Toronto Blue Jays are the early favorite to win the World Series. First off, the early favorite to win the World Series almost never wins the World Series. But they have an opportunity.

I can specifically remember watching Joe Carter blast a game-winning home run in the 1993 World Series, the last time Toronto was relevant in baseball. Oct. 23, 1993. Now, nearly 20 years later, the Blue Jays boosted their payroll by almost 50 percent in the offseason in an attempt to regain relevance. 

Signing the reigning National League Cy Young Award Winner, R.A. Dickey, is a very important step for them. Mark Buehrle, Jose Reyes and Melky Cabrera are also huge steps for a team that wants to be relevant. Oh yea, and they have Joey Bats. 32 years young Jose Bautista has a knack for the home run. The all-star outfielder hit 54, 43 and 27 the last three season’s respectively. Last years shortened because of an injury. This guy can hit the ball. The key factor however will be actually playing the games and doing so successfully.

(AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

More news from the American League came on Tuesday when King Felix completed an extension to keep the ace in Seattle long enough to become a SuperSonics fan again.

The San Francisco Giants of the National League will look to repeat as World Series Champions, something that hasn’t been done since the Yankees won three straight from 1998-2000. The Giants won three seasons ago and have won eight out of their last nine in the World Series. San Francisco does have the talent to win it, obviously, they are the champs. The question will be, can they repeat? It seems extremely hard to do.

No talk of baseball is complete without the mention of the New York Yankees. This may not be exactly true for every baseball story, but this is definitely what makes opponents of the pinstripes despise them even more. Why talk about an aging team that may or may not win half of their games? 10,000 simulations done by ESPN have the Yankees winning less than 90 games, which is actually more than half, but not the same as their 95 wins a year ago that won them the A.L. East.

Alex Rodriguez provides an interesting storyline as he often does but personally I’m over A-Roid and all that comes with that. More importantly, for the Yankees, the greatest closer in the history of baseball is preparing to make a comeback from a devastating knee injury. Mariano Rivera tore his ACL last season while fielding fly-balls in batting practice. The 43-year-old closer has 608 saves and may have retired after last season had he not been injured.

(AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

And then there is the captain. Number two. Derek. Jeter. Almost to 2,600 games played as a Yankee, Jeter will turn 39 in mid-season. This actually brings up the biggest question mark for the Yankees. Can the old guys win?

Whether or not they can is irrelevant. Can they? Yes. It's a game played between to teams, somebody has to win. Will they? Probably. Is this year’s version of the Evil Empire strong enough to endure the next nine months and get hot at the right time and pull out an amazing postseason run and topple some much younger more athletic team who is favored to win? Absolutely.

What's next?

Sports has officially reached the point that most fans think is "Boring."
Boring to me would be the time of the year when there are no games on television or there is nothing happening in the area that I can go and watch. The interesting thing about that is, there is never a single day in the modern-day calendar where that happens.
Maybe sports get to a boring part because football won't be on television again for more than 200 days.

Maybe there is a lull in sports after the NBA season has come to an end. But there is always more than one sport happening each and everyday. Christmas? Yup, that's actually a big day for sports. Thanksgiving? Of course. You are kind of supposed to watch football on Thanksgiving. New Years Eve and New Years Day the same and the rest of the holiday's included, sports do not have a Boring Season.

Football is over and I am a little sad about that. I am partial to watching football on CBS because of their theme music that plays going out to commercials and coming back in. I also love to watch football on any other channel just because it is football!
Not having that until later in the summer is going to be a bummer, but now I get to focus my entire attention to basketball. March Madness is right around the corner. The Finals are coming soon. Hockey is actually playing again, I bet most people didn't even realize that. And pitchers and catchers report this month!
Sports don't get boring, they just keep going.