Becoming a Sports Writer

You already know from my previous post how much I love the major sports and especially basketball and football. Becoming a sports writer might actually be something that would be less hectic for me relative to the demands of a sports agent. Don’t get me wrong writing sports articles is pretty challenging with the deadlines and things like that, but covering basketball and football at the college and pro level would be more like a hobby than work for me.

Skip Bayless is definitely an inspiration and I envy his life. I guess having a great writing background is what really helps and Skip definitely has his graduating from Vanderbilt University and then going straight to work for the Miami Herald writing about sports before moving on to the Los Angeles Times. However, he is a television sports commentator now and that would really be something that I would like to end up in ultimately if I were to go down the sports writer route. Watch for the “Becoming a Television Sports Commentator” post that I will be putting up on this blog next week.

Getting back to sports writing, I am not really big about having a writing background as I feel like a lot of things can be learnt on your own like watching and learning the sport(s) you are covering. But, I guess writing courses do help especially in convincing potential employers that you have the necessary skills. I think investing some time in learning to type will definitely come in handy particularly shorthand. Writing shorthand will help you get a lot of information when you do interviews and you don’t have to go through the slow process of recording a conversation and then transcribing.

Get your foot in the door by getting some experience whether it is big or small. College or high school newspapers can be great and you can even try to cover high school sports in the local newspaper. As with any profession, read and observe the best in the field. I like to read Michael Wilbon, Jim Souhan of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dan Le Batard and Mitch Albom among many others.