Why I’m Done Working In Sports
Recently, 18-year-old soccer player Jonathan Gonzalez, who was born in the United States to Mexican parents, reportedly decided to represent Mexico instead of the U.S. in international soccer.
Immediately, the sports conversation centered around organizational soccer politics. But for me, someone who grew up on the U.S. and Mexico border, this was a story about identity and duality, and about a very conflicting choice that most Americans will never face, and certainly not at age 18: who and what do you represent? I’ve thought about that question almost every day of my life, and I still am not sure about the answer.
In my mind, this wasn’t a sports story at all, and it annoyed me that it had turned into one. And then it struck me that perhaps the reason I felt so strongly about this was because I wasn’t a sports person anymore. It reinforced a decision I had made several months ago: I’m done working in sports.
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when I first felt this way, but it may have originally come way back in 2012 when my marriage fell apart.
At that point, my relationship with words was complicated. For more than a decade, I had made money building stories with them, but when I needed them most in my personal life, my words didn’t matter. I believed in the power of words, but then I asked someone to stay and she left anyway.
As a result, I didn’t have it in me to write anymore. I didn’t even have it in me to read books. I most certainly didn’t want to write about sports. It all seemed so inconsequential.
Of course it didn’t work out that way. I kept writing about sports because I had to. It was a way to make a living. But for the first time in my journalistic career, I didn’t want to be doing it. And finally now, I’ve made that decision not to do it.
I debated writing this post. Friends and colleagues who know me well will attest that I am not one who enjoys putting himself in the spotlight. I don’t have any illusions that anyone will care too much about what I have to say about my career. But I also felt I owed an explanation to every editor and coworker, every friend, and every person who read and enjoyed a story that I’ve written or edited. Every one of these people took the time to work with me, encourage me, or simply read or watch something I had helped create. I will always thank them for it. I also felt I owed a bigger explanation to those friends and former colleagues or potential employers in the sports media world who have reached out to inquire about my well being in the months since the layoffs at VICE.
For awhile, it felt like my career interests had been revitalized when I joined VICE in 2014 to write about sports. A group of incredibly talented writers and editors, from various types of writing and journalism backgrounds, built VICE Sports into a unique voice that didn’t exist in the sports landscape.
When given the opportunity to run the site as editor-in-chief in 2015, I wanted to continue what had been started, but also emphasize collaborative storytelling. We were going to be a place where writers and editors wanted to be. For the most part, we succeeded. We developed young writers, we found new voices, we won awards and were nominated for numerous others, and our stories were shared widely. I could not have been more proud of the staff, and could not have been more happy to be working with them. But even then, I knew it was a last gasp for my career in sports journalism.
When the layoffs hit VICE last summer, there was obviously a lot of sadness. I would terribly miss working with all the wonderful people at VICE Sports. But there was also relief. I could finally move on. And now, I had a direction.
My relationship with words had changed. The collaboration involved in editing made me realize that I was more interested in shaping words than writing them. Together, a writer and an editor could truly build something special.
As a writer, you realize that nothing is ever enough. There’s never enough praise, admiration, or success. The insecurities can be crippling. You constantly wonder whether you are good enough. And sometimes during the writing process you can feel that you are totally on your own. It’s a lonely feeling.
But I quickly found out that I could leave all those things behind when I was an editor. My experiences made me believe I had insight to make the process better for a writer. The truly transformative moment was when I realized that I got total satisfaction when a writer got praised for a story we had worked on together without caring that nobody knew that I had worked on it. For the first time in my career, the work truly was all about putting out the best story possible.
Finally, me and words were on the same page again.
Now I’m looking for the next challenge in something other than sports. It could be anything: news, business, features, style, arts, music, etc. Many fields interest me. I want to be challenged again. Hopefully, someone gives me a chance. The basic principles of journalism don’t change just because you’re writing and editing stories about sports. In the end, it’s all about building stories.
I don’t feel a bit of nostalgia when I reflect on my sportswriting career, which is how I know this is the right choice to make. But I am proud of everything I was able to accomplish. I was often the only, and sometimes the first ever, Latino to be working and writing in newsrooms for such places as the Bergen Record, the Washington Post, ESPN, the New York Times, and VICE, which allowed me to write about athletes and issues that might not ever have been discussed. I had the opportunity to travel to countries and places I would have never visited. I worked in front of and behind the camera. I ran a site. It’s been a good career. And that’s why I’m excited about what will come next.
Some will wonder why I chose to write this since choices like this don’t have to be so clear cut. Any decision can be changed. Why be so definite? But I know for me there is no turning back. I am far removed from the current sports discourse.
Most importantly, I am reading again. And I guess I am writing too. This feels like the start of a new chapter to continue to figure out who and what I represent.
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