The Past, Present and Future
I cannot tell you how incredibly lucky I’ve been to have the opportunities I’ve had over the past 15ish months. Sports have taken me places I never thought they would take me. I worked for SB Nation covering a bowl-winning Big Ten football team and a history-making basketball team. I worked for freaking Sports Illustrated, a place I only dreamed of working for. Hell, it seems like only yesterday I was digging through my dad’s mail pile back home, hoping to read SI before he could so we could discuss every issue together for hours on end. I worked for Yahoo Sports, where my words reached tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of people every day. I’ve met so many cool, talented, kind and inspiring people and had so many great experiences. Honestly, if I had the chance to do the last year-plus all over, I think I would.
Before I dive too far deep into this, though, I realize on the surface, running a sports blog and writing about sports in general is not a big deal in the scheme of things. Heck, sports in general aren’t a big deal in the scheme of things—the flooding in Texas in the past weeks have shown us as much. Don’t get me wrong. There are great things about sports. They bring us to tears — both happy and sad — and they bring people together. The people that play them come from so many different backgrounds. You can sit on a couch or at a bar or in the stands and become best friends with a stranger for a few hours simply because they happen to root for the same random group of athletes that you do. Maybe those people turn into lifelong relationships. You don’t have to be a great athlete to love sports. You don’t have to know a ton about sports to love sports. So maybe sports are a big deal. They bring people together, which is awesome. It’s a big part of why I hope to be around sports for the rest of my life.
I traveled *whips out calculator* …uhh… way too many miles on way too many trips to remember or calculate. Here’s a list of places I went, just for sports, in (kind of) chronological order;
Evanston and Chicago a bunch (duh), Kenosha, Kenosha again, Iowa City, East Lansing, Columbus, West Lafayette, New York City, Madison, Champaign, Washington D.C., Salt Lake City, New York City (again), Washington D.C. (again), Los Angeles, Pasadena and Orange County.
The craziest span was two weeks in March: Fly from Evanston to D.C. Four days later, fly back to Evanston. Two days later, fly to Salt Lake City. Five days later, fly to Evanston. Ten hours later, fly home (Virginia). Three days later, drive to New York City.
More importantly, though, those places provided me with so, so many memories. And what more could you fill your life with than memories you can forever cherish?
In Iowa City with Josh Burton and Will Ragatz, I watched Northwestern finally perform to their potential, stunning Hawkeye faithful at Kinnick on homecoming. I also remember my cousin and Will dueling at ping pong in my cousins’ basement where we stayed and running around with video game K̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶C̶o̶l̶t̶e̶r̶ QB#2 in NCAA Football 14 (RIP).
In East Lansing with Sam Brief, Zach Wingrove and Rob Schaefer, I remember our entire section in the press box sitting in stunned silence as Northwestern hung a record 54 points on the Spartans, ruining another homecoming. I will never forget all four of us just staring at each other, mouths agape, after Solomon’s Vault kickoff return touchdown. Man, that game was just nuts.
In Columbus with Josh Rosenblat, Josh Burton and Ian McCafferty, I remember walking. Just walking — well, wading — through throngs of scarlet and grey just before kickoff. And holy cow, The Horseshoe was just unbelievable. Unreal. So, so cool.
In West Lafayette with Will Ragatz and Ian McCafferty I remember being sick as a dog as Northwestern ran up 45 on the Boilermakers. As my dad says, someone invited a lot of empty seats to that game. Purdue is terrible.
(P.S. Thanks mom and dad for convincing me to take a week off for Minnesota. Not only did Northwestern play terribly but I think my immune system would have collapsed.)
In New York City with Josh Rosenblat, Tristan Jung, Will Ragatz and Ian McCafferty, I remember — well nothing specific. I was covering a sporting event in Yankee Stadium, and I think that speaks for itself. Also, shoutout to Justin Jackson. If you watched, you know.
And that’s just football season, which was nowhere near as memorable as basketball season. I watched Northwestern make history in Madison and Washington D.C. (shoutout to Caleb Friedman and his parents for letting three college kids crash at his house) and Salt Lake City and, yes, even right at home in Evanston in Welsh-Ryan Arena, the ***mecca*** of college basketball.
Oh yeah, I went to the NCAA Tournament.
I WENT TO THE NCAA TOURNAMENT.
TO COVER NORTHWESTERN.
WHO ALSO WENT TO THE NCAA TOURNAMENT.
NORTHWESTERN WENT TO THE F**KING NCAA TOURNAMENT.
And I think what the players will remember from that magical season is what I’ll remember, too. So I wrote about that.
Man, that was so awesome. I got chills so many times. I get chills thinking about it.
So, you’re probably wondering why I’m writing this, right? Sounds like a pretty sweet life. And on the surface, it was. And it is.
But I’ll tell you straight up, the last 15 months — from when I took over Inside NU to now, having just finished up two-and-a-half incredible months with Yahoo Sports—took a lot out of me. A lot. And it was more than just the late nights, of which there was plenty. Almost everything I did during the school year was a tradeoff, which isn’t at all the way anyone should live life. But for me, if I spent time doing schoolwork, I always felt the need to be editing or writing or was lamenting the fact that I wasn’t keeping up with my physical health. If I was writing or editing, I felt (and knew) I was falling behind in my schoolwork and, again, not taking care of myself. And if I did sneak out for an hour to get to the gym or to a social event, there was always a little voice in my head wondering if every assignment was turned in or every story was edited and ready to go. There were too many parties or get-togethers to count that I left early or skipped just to work or maybe — just maybe—get to bed at 1 a.m. instead of 2 or 3 a.m.
That made me frustrated and sometimes lonely. I spent a lot of time cooped up in my room in my fraternity house, working when I wanted to be hanging out, and the time I did spend hanging out, I could never escape the work. What if a recruit signed? What if news broke? Was I missing something? Could we be doing something better?
And the thing I realized is my work habits carried over to my social habits. Writing is an art where I put so much time and effort in to make it as good as I could, but once it was done, I was done. There was no continuation. No matter how long or meticulously researched or intricately constructed a piece can be, it always has a due date and then it’s done. The same goes for school.
But the same doesn’t go for people.
You can’t just pour in effort for a few hours — no matter how many hours that may be — and expect a result from a singular effort when it comes to building relationships. It takes constant cultivation. It means putting forth effort not just once, but over and over and over again, over the span of weeks, months and years. Companionship is like writing a novel, crafted through years of struggles and successes and adjustments; I was writing a bunch of one-page stories. And for that I cut myself and others short, and that’s something I hope to change this year, because cutting myself and others short in that department sucked.
I constantly worried that I wasn’t having the “college experience” I could tell my friends and family and, one day, kids and grandkids about. I mean, who wants to hear about me chowing down on hastily made grilled cheeses, surrounded by mountains of empty water bottles, Pop-Tart wrappers and stats sheets? I was missing out.
But now I sit here and realize that I have so many stories to tell my future kids and grandkids, not so few. I’ll tell them about flying out in a snowstorm to watch Northwestern play in its first-ever NCAA Tournament. I’ll tell them about talking to college football greats Pat Fitzgerald and Justin Jackson. I’ll tell them about how I watched Vic Law Jr., Bryant McIntosh, Scottie Lindsey and Gavin Skelly grow from youngsters who couldn’t buy a win to veterans who gave you legit reason to think they could beat anyone. And I’ll tell them about how I grew with them. I’ll tell them about Iowa City and East Lansing and Columbus and W̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶L̶a̶f̶a̶y̶e̶t̶t̶e̶ and New York and all the other places. I’ll tell them about getting my name in Sports Illustrated and covering the Rams and the Chargers for Yahoo Sports as a 20-year-old. And I’m planning on having plenty more stories to tell, too.
I learned a lot about myself over the past 15 months. I can write pretty damn well (I’d like to think), and I really do like writing (there have been doubts). I can survive off four or five hours of sleep every night. But I also sometimes need five-minute naps the following afternoon…And sometimes those naps come in class...And sometimes those naps end up being five hours.
But most importantly, I learned that I’m not perfect, and that’s ok. I used to beat myself up if Inside NU missed a recruit committing or if I made an error or everything wasn’t perfect. I still despise making mistakes, but I don’t despise myself for making mistakes. There’s a big difference. I’ve always been a perfectionist, but now I realize I can’t be perfect. And that’s ok. No one can. I can gladly settle for good enough, and if it’s good enough for me, that’s all that I can reasonably expect. It was definitely a process, though, and not one that was always as straightforward as I wanted it to be.
I have absolutely loved the work I’ve been so fortunate to do. As I said earlier, I’d do it all over again. I love sports and I love writing. For a kid from teeny Waynesboro, Virginia to be able to combine those two loves on a national stage has been overwhelming and wonderful and exhilarating (seriously, it’s been an honor, and to anyone reading this who hired me or has worked with me, thank you so, so much). But I am looking forward to some more balance going forward—being a better worker, a better friend and a better me.
So what’s next? Well, first I’m heading home before school starts. I’m going to spend more time at home in the next eight days than I have the entire rest of this calendar year combined. Then I’ll head back to Northwestern, where I’m living with some of my closest friends and excited to continue to develop my relationship with not only them but also all the other people I didn’t get to hang out with as much as I wanted to last year. I’ll stick around at Inside NU in some role. And I’ll to contribute to Yahoo Sports on the NFL and fantasy football side, about which I am ecstatic. I’m not sure what the next half-year holds exactly, and I certainly don’t know what will happen once I enter the real world. But whatever I do for the next six months or so, I’m going to be sure to make the most of it. And that’s something I’m really excited about.
