CFL host Brodie Lawson
Brodie Lawson, host of the Canadian Football League (CFL), spoke to Meghna Sarawat all about her career and personal life in this candid interview.
Tell us a little about yourself?
I am a host for the Canadian Football League, that basically means that I do most of their front-facing hosting and all that it entails. We have a weekly show called “CFL Game Time,” which we took on the road last summer and were travelling for 12 weeks. We also shot a series, called the “Grind”, where I work out with CFL players to see if I can keep up with their off-season training. Basically, anything the league itself, not team by team, but the league is doing from a digital media perspective. I do the on-camera hosting. I also occasionally work with TSN for their Thursday night football
broadcast and that is new to my role as of this summer. A lot of moving around, a lot of editing and a lot of on camera work. It changes kind of, week to week, day to day.
What was your journey to getting to where you are today?
I took media studies at the University of Western Ontario, I was in the faculty of Information and Media Studies. From there I interned with TSN for a summer in the newsroom. I loved the pace of television and realized after working in the newsroom that summer, that I wanted to work in TV because this feeling was just so much better than sitting at a desk. When I went back to university that year, I realized I needed to get practical experience. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do within television, but I knew I wanted to work in the industry. I started volunteering at Western and at the local television station. I covered national baseball and the national basketball league of Canada and I had a little segment on Rogers TV. I was just working on building my
demo and seeing if it was going to be a fit for me to work in the industry.
I really loved it and when I graduated from Western I applied to the Hamilton Tiger Cats. They had a position for a host for the season and I applied. I interviewed and did a little screen test and I got the job. It was through that internship that I learned how to edit and honed my skill on being on camera, I fell in love with football and that was, kind of my main stepping stone, to getting to where I am today. I then went to CBC for a short time, filling in, in their sports desk and from there to CFL. I’ve been with the league since 2015 and have had a couple of different roles within it, but have absolutely loved it.
You were without a job for several months, what did you learn from that experience?
That’s something I always try to reiterate to young people and to students. There were several times over those two years that I didn’t have work. Not only did I not have work, I had no idea where I was going next or if it was even viable for me to stay in the media industry. There were two to three month stretches where I was just taking coffee’s and emailing and calling people. I’ve been going through my inbox recently because I am speaking at Algoma University and so I was trying to dig up my old demo reel. It’s amazing how many people I reached out to and sometimes they were great meetings and something came from them and sometimes, they weren’t. But, I kept my options open. I still considered going to teacher’s college, considered working in PR for a little bit. When unemployed — it’s so difficult not to get down on yourself and feel like what you’re chasing isn’t realistic but at the end of the day, I just felt like I couldn’t not pursue something because of fear, it felt so silly to me, to not do something because I was afraid of it. That was not the way I lived my life. I was not going to do that when it came to my life and livelihood, so that was always my driving force. I knew if I could stick it out until I was 25/26 and if it still wasn’t working out by then, I would look somewhere else, but I knew that I needed to commit a few solid years to it before that. I think that you grow the most always in times of struggle. I mean, I would say that those times were certainly difficult, but I have had
more challenging times personally with family stuff that were certainly worse than those times of being unemployed. I still had a roof over my head, parents that were encouraging me and great friends. At the time, when my life was at its worst, it felt like the hardest stuff, and it’s so hard when you’re in it, but
when you look back you realize that it [the hard time] is so critical to toughening you up. Certainly, through those moments in my career they made me realize that if I really wanted to do it, I was going to need to toughen up and I was going to need to look at myself and be really honest. It’s not that I think that everyone needs to go through that. My goodness if you can cruise through life and have a great, easy life, by all means go for it, but I certainly learned the most from being in that situation.
Your family has had quite the mark on the sports industry, did you ever feel pressured or more inclined to go in the same field?
I never felt pushed into this from my family, I felt really encouraged by them. They have always been my biggest cheerleaders. To this day, if I am having a tough time about something, I will always call my mom or my dad and be like “Am I doing the right thing? How do I handle this? How would you handle this?” And they have always been there encouraging and supporting me, especially in moments when I could not see the light and see that it was all going to work out. They always felt like it would. They have also been huge role models to me and great examples of how, if you really just do good work and care about what you do, good things will happen and I really fundamentally believe that, that has happened to me and what will happen to the readers.and sometimes they were great meetings and something came from them and sometimes, they weren’t. But, I kept my options open. I still considered going to teacher’s college, considered working in PR for a little bit.
I grew up going to games with my dad, we went to baseball games all the time and hockey games. I used to watch my brothers play baseball every summer I was schlepped around to baseball parks all around the province. I was an athlete myself, I was a downhill ski racer, so I spent a ton of time working out in the gym. It certainly impacted where I wanted to go with my career.
What are the good and bad parts of being in your position?
The best part of my job is getting to tell the stories of the amazing and talented players in the CFL. There’s not really the worst part, but the hardest part of my job is keeping my energy and focus up when things get really busy. I get drained really quickly, that I find to be very difficult, I always want to be on for everyone that is relying on me and I want to be a good team player. That’s the hardest part.
What do you do when you’re not working?
I am really passionate about health and staying healthy and keeping my body healthy. I travel quite a bit for work so it’s important to me, when I have some downtime, to continue to exercise. It sounds super cliché and what you would expect, but it’s the truth. If I don’t work out and keep my body moving, it really impacts my mental health as well as my physical health. I’ll go to the gym, I love to see my girlfriends, or hang out with my family. I find that I am a bit of an introvert and take energy from being by myself. I need to reload
because I spend a lot of time front facing in my job. On the other hand, I spend a lot of time with men, who I love and adore, but sometimes you need to hang out with your girlfriends and talk about stuff they don’t want to talk about.
It’s really important to schedule time with those people, because everyone needs time with their friends. So, I would be in the gym, I would be hanging out with my girlfriends, I would probably be planning a dinner out in the city, I love to try new restaurants. I love to shop, bordering on an addiction, I would probably be out shopping for something I didn’t need, grabbing a great latte, pretty basic stuff. It’s so fun for me to just be home, that when I am home I just love to do the 101 things I love. It’s about taking time, when you can, to enjoy the peaceful moments and just realising that life is messy and busy and that you have to just take the quiet moments when you can and find ways to quickly fill yourself back up.
You were in the editing room as well. Was it difficult or did you like editing?
Yeah, I started off as an editor. I did like doing it because, I find that I am pretty project based, so I like the process of going through something start to finish and you know, being able to complete a project. I found it and I find it really isolating and it gave me the same restlessness that working at a desk gave me. So, I knew that I couldn’t do it long term and when I have big editing projects today, because I still edit most of my own work, not our bigger shows but kind of the one-off things that I do, I edit those. But it’s hugely important that people who want to be in sport media-it’s very rare that you would just get hired as talent, or just get hired as a producer. People want to know that you can produce and you can also shoot, or you can produce and you can also edit. It makes you much more valuable, so it’s important to diversify your skills.
I find editing very difficult, so that is very impressive…
Again, find someone to mentor you, I did it through an internship and not everyone can take an internship and work for free and I get that, it’s tough. If you can, you can look at it as an exchange, what are you going to be learning while you’re there. If there is a way to make it work, if there is a way to take work on the side, which a lot of my friends at the Tiger Cats were doing. You’re learning something [at your internship] and I would never have this job right now if I hadn’t taken that internship.
Your advice to young professionals and who wants to go into the sports media world?
My first piece of advice is to people that want to work in sports media is to be really proud and vocal about the fact that you want to do it. There is no reason for you to be shy about it because, the way that you get into the business is typically through networking. You can apply to jobs all you want, but you need to try and connect with people who already in the business. We are always looking to hire people, we just want to hire and work with really good people. If you’re telling your friends, family, your parents’ friends, and your colleagues that you want to do this, there’s a chance that someone would actually say, “Oh I know someone that works for the CFL or for the Blue
Jays, I can totally set you up for a coffee.” You’d be shocked how generous people are just to connect you to other people, so be very vocal about what it is you want to do.
The second piece of advice that I would give to sports specifically, is be prepared to do any job. I set out to be on camera but I knew that I needed to do other work. I had to learn how to edit and write and for the
better part of my work for the CFL, I was an editor. I was working all weekend, cutting highlight packs and getting clips — you have to be flexible and you learn how to do other things and just get your foot in the door. It sounds so trite but it really is the only way to do it. I would love for young people to sit and think about what they would do if they were not afraid to fail. What would you do if you were not afraid to fail? What would that job look like? What would your life look like? I know that within reason some of it is not possible but I really want people to think about that and chase that — that’s what’s important.
I would also say to young people, to not get discouraged when it doesn’t work out right away, I was unemployed several times, I was in jobs that were boring, I would stuck and so lost. I remember taking calls with a girlfriend of mine, who was at teachers college saying — if nothing happens by the end of the year, I am going to apply to be a teacher — I was so close to changing my course and you need to stick it out long enough and really try before you quit.
Have faith that if you’re a little off course, just keep doing good work and keep meeting new people and dig in a little deeper. I think that it all works out. You can ask people in the same industry as me, everyone felt lost, everyone felt like they weren’t doing the right thing, everyone felt like it wasn’t going to work out. You have to push through.
