Courtesy: Bleacher Report
The holidays are meant to be a time where family and friends come together to share pleasantries, laugh and reflect on the good times that were had in the past.
Each and every year we gather together to celebrate whatever holiday our beliefs direct us toward and no matter the denomination, each individual finds some common ground where they are allowed to live out their fullest potential and gain the utmost satisfaction from the respective celebratory day.
This isn’t a story about sports as much as it is about a gift that I’ve been given and that is being involved in sports.
Ever since I was a young chap, I could remember staring at the television in my parents’ living room, much like I do now, as my pupils would become dilated from watching so much “SportsCenter” on ESPN. I always told my parents I wanted to be just like Stuart Scott and come up with a catchy phrase like “Booyah!”
And while I’m not there just yet, I know that based on the pathway I am on right now, I’m going to live out a dream I created when I was just getting out of diapers.
When something becomes your passion, you’ll do anything for it, no matter how foolish you look. People have came to me and asked me why I’m so emotionally invested in the sports world and I always tell them, ” Do you like to breathe everyday? This is my oxygen. This keeps me alive.”
I’ve had folks question about how lucrative a career in sports may become and that’s the one thing I never considered as a six-year-old boy from Rosedale, Md. I never once considered, nor thought to care about how rich I could become by building a foundation for my career in sports media. I’ve had people try to convince me to do something else because that something else has more zeros and figures on the annual salary.
Sometimes, money doesn’t buy happiness. Happiness stems from finding the littlest things that make a day on planet Earth that much more satisfying. We all want instant gratification, but more often than not, the journey has it’s ups and downs.
I didn’t get into sports any aspect of sports media, production, writing, etc. until my second semester of my freshman year at Salisbury University. I was making one 20-minute sportscast a week, but I tried to kill every time even though I was clearly a novice at the craft. I received my first media credential my second semester of junior year covering NCAA lacrosse. I was one of the three winners of WNST’s Baltimore Sports Media Superstar contest in 2012 and was given the opportunity to cover the Baltimore Ravens during their Super Bowl run and the Maryland Terrapins during basketball season. I now cover the Baltimore Orioles minor league system for Orioles-Nation.com and the Washington Capitals for this great website The Sports Column.
All of these accomplishments came with sacrifices like most gifts do: gas for the car, time, effort, time-management, less social interactivity with friends, sleep and more. I will never forget driving to and from Salisbury during my final semester of college to work weekends with the WNST.net crew in the fall of 2012. Some may have thought I was crazy to wake up at 6 a.m. every Thursday morning to get a workout in, eat breakfast, go to class until 3 p.m. and then hit the road for “Thursday Night Live” all season with Baltimore Ravens tight end Dennis Pitta. It was never about the money. It was never about the drive. It was never about being around Ravens players. It was about being involved in something that I was put on this planet to do and that’s take my passion to the next level.
While I realize this area of work requires more experience than other fields — sports media is extremely competitive and everyone is always looking for the next man up — the uneasiness of knowing that someone can always take your spot is a competitive nature that I’ve always had and that I’ve always loved about sports.
Another great part to this gift of working in sports is the ability to inform, entertain and persuade.
I’m one of the most opinionated people you will probably ever meet — stubborn may be an understatement at times. But, if I can help in explaining why I thought Corey Graham wasn’t the main reason why an opposition scored on a blown coverage when Baltimore was in a Cover 2 defense and convince you as to why the opinion may be right or wrong, then I feel like I’ve made a difference.
Some of you probably hate memes. Some of you probably hate seeing me post memes. If you think they’re funny, great. If not, well… then you might be a Redskins fan because I do a lot of these (Sorry to Jeffrey Powers and other Redskins fans associated with this site):
Courtesy: Jeff Kryglik TSC
Being told “thank you” and “nice read” and things of that nature are also what keeps me going, but the best gift of all is the people you meet. They understand the grind. They embrace it. Some do it differently than others, but that’s the beauty of sports. No one person is alike or the same and that’s why sports talk and writing is the best avenue for discussion and forum in my opinion. Nothing is better than banter than can be never-ending and with sports there doesn’t seem like an end in sight. Everyone has an opinion. There isn’t a right or wrong one, but it’s certainly great to have one.
I want to wish all of those who are a member of The Sports Column team a very Merry Christmas and a special thanks to Brett Dickinson for making this all possible. I want to also thank everyone who follows my work across several media avenues and for those who visit this site for a cornucopia of reasons. Without you, The Sports Column, and sports media for that matter, doesn’t exist.
