I don’t quite know how to describe the last 11 months.
One definite positive is that 11 is less than the 14, that being the amount of months I went between blogs last time I promised to be better at keeping up, and by definition, that’s an exceptionally incremental improvement (even if in reality it’s still terrible).
I digress.
Before I put digital pen to paper for this blog, I read my last jotting from 11 months ago, and by god, it feels like a different lifetime.
Last time I wrote here I was waxing nostalgic about East Tennessee State’s 2021 football season, my satisfaction with my on-air improvement during the 2021-22 athletic year and my constant reassessment of my life and its direction.
That direction sure changed fast.
A mere six weeks after I wrote that blog, I was accepting a position OUT of broadcasting in my home state of Minnesota. It’s not as drastic of a change as it may sound in that one sentence, but at the same time WHAT IN THE WORLD AM I SAYING IT IS ABSOLUTELY AS DRASTIC AND WAY MORE DRASTIC THAN THE WORD DRASTIC CAN EVEN CONVEY.
So, what happened? I’m not sure that 9 months removed from the decision I still even fully know, but I’ll try to sort through it.
* * *
Things were fine at ETSU. Things were fine in broadcasting. Heck, things were fine in life. Johnson City has a lot of great qualities including geographical beauty, wonderful weather darn close to 365 days a year, and incredible affordability. Professionally, I was doing what I had always hoped - getting to broadcast sports full-time and getting by financially doing so - and personally, my girlfriend Meagan had joined me in northeast Tennessee in 2019, we moved in together just after COVID hit in 2020, and we got to visit our favorite city in America as often as we wanted (Asheville, NC, just an hour away from our place). That was life, and it wasn’t too shabby.
But with life, we’ve got just one to live, and as I continued to take inventory of mine, I began to wonder if I was leading it with the right things in mind.
Having mountains overlook your back porch is fantastic. The temperature never getting below 20 and never getting above 90 is immaculate. Paying $750 for a spacious two-bedroom apartment is a value you seemingly can’t find anywhere anymore, let alone just a 10-minute drive from a job you love to do. I was privileged to be able to have those things, and I may even sound crazy to give up such a sweet setup. Maybe I was.
But right or wrong, the one life I have to live will be led by people, and it was time to put mine first again.
Meagan and I talked at the beginning of the 2022 summer, and she said that at some point in the next couple of years, it was going to be time to move home. She has nieces and nephews, we have a goddaughter, and the vast majority of our friends and family, moving into crucial parts of their lives, reside in Minnesota. Meagan sacrificed and moved to Tennessee for me, and when I added that to our want to support our folks back home, it seemed we’d be doing the right thing for ourselves individually as well as our collective relationship.
Now, full transparency shining through, it sounds great to say “people are number one in our lives” and leave it there, but I won’t martyr myself with the lie that we would just up and go when we figured out that statement. The reality of it is Meagan and I care a ton about our professional experiences too, so things would have to make sense.
Before we knew it, they did.
* * *
The University of St. Thomas is a prestigious institution in Minnesota. The largest private school in the state, the 10,000-student Twin Cities-based learning center has long been known for their powerful alumni base of business connections, as well as their powerhouse stature in Division III athletics. National champions in basketball, baseball and a variety of other sports during the first 20 years of the millennium, the Tommies trajectory was headed through the roof.
Perhaps more than they ever could’ve known.
That 2019 decision by the MIAC that caught the attention of media outlets far and wide may seem like a potentially bad outcome for St. Thomas, but the reality was the exact opposite. Shortly after the conference’s decision, the Tommies drew an invitation from the Division I Summit League, home to the state schools of the Dakotas, the University of Denver, University of Omaha, University of Kansas City and other Division I mid-majors.
A road not traveled prior to this point, if St. Thomas could get the waivers necessary they would be the first-ever team to go straight from Division III to Division I, bypassing the previously-established rule that ensured athletic programs could jump just one division at a time, needing to spend a minimum of 12 years at their new division before moving up again.
A well-resourced, highly-successful, highly-though-of major market university, the waivers fell into place and the first-of-its-kind journey was slated to begin in the fall of 2021.
Where did I fit in? I thought it may be something in broadcasting. I had covered St. Thomas in my days working for the MIAC, broadcasting for and against the Tommies in my freelance work right out of college, and my original connection to St. Thomas predates any of that, hitting a pair of home runs against UST when I played baseball at Augsburg during my undergraduate days. I had long-admired the success of the Purple & Gray, and was well-versed and well-connected to their history and those that managed it internally. So when I met with Tommie brass to discuss what broadcasting for them may look like in the summer of 2021, I was optimistic I had an inside track to play a role I was familiar with in a place I knew so well. In the end, though, St. Thomas signed third-party rights holder Learfield to manage the broadcasting side, and they went with an internal candidate that had worked for them crosstown at the University of Minnesota for more than a decade.
Needless to say, I thought that was that.
But with an existing relationship with multiple people at St. Thomas, including athletic director Phil Esten, when a long-time member of their staff unexpectedly moved on one summer after our initial conversations, I received an email from Phil asking if I’d be interested in applying for his position. “It’s not broadcasting,” he was sure to warn.
It was, however, a crossroads.
I loved broadcasting, and a part of me always will. I put in unthinkable hours and went to unimaginable lengths to even get to the relatively low-level position I had at ETSU. It was years of long bike rides to get to gigs where I’d have single-digit listeners, late nights in the dead of winter taking the bus back after calling Division III doubleheaders, and total exhaustion working a full-time job just to feed my need of broadcasting things like swimming and youth soccer. It was sucking for years and years before getting good enough to get behind the mic for games that even a small amount of people actually cared about.
It was SO. MUCH. EFFORT. Was I really ready to take the headset off, just when it was getting comfortable.
I suppose comfort is never something that’s fit me.
* * *
Not sure I’ll ever know if this was professionally the right decision, but I can tell you that 10 months into this position I’ve already gotten more than I bargained for in the “grow” and “learn” categories!
So what does the day-to-day look like now? It’s certainly less camera-facing, less about me and any “brand” I was looking to personally propagate, and less of the “comfort” that I was becoming accustomed to on the mic. But with those sacrifices come new skills, a chance to be a part of a once-in-a-lifetime expansion and the opportunity to leap into a different echelon of the professional sphere.
It’s been a lot, but in leading our streaming and TV productions, creative content, digital strategy, social media and branding, we’ve had more successes than I could’ve imagined this year.
My specific role in all of these isn’t important, that’s something this job has shown me in spades, but in this combo position I’ve undertaken what I can say is that there is a ton of oversight while simultaneously requiring a ton of hands-on. I’ll run camera on our live productions one day, troubleshoot a streaming problem the next. I’ll create a video from scratch Saturday, work with others on the products they’d like to have published on Sunday. Help design a jersey in one meeting, help design part of a $200M stadium right after. It’s anything and everything, but always a new something.
* * *
I do hope to revisit broadcasting at some point, but that season has passed for the moment. In the immediate it’s knowledge and growth, guidance and leadership, playing my part professionally, and more importantly, for my people. That part, the most important part, has been abundant since coming back to Minnesota, and while I’m not sure I’ll ever know if I made the right decision professionally, I feel great personal peace at birthdays, baby showers and brunches. They’re living testaments to why I’m here. Why a hard choice seemed clear. Why I’d make the same choice again.
We march on, with our people by our side.