Tag Archives: Indiana

Will he wear red sweater? What to expect from Knight on call of first Indiana game

Posted on by

This won’t be an ordinary broadcast of an Indiana-Georgia game tonight in Brooklyn on ESPN (5:30 ET). Oh no, not with Bob Knight working the game with Dan Shulman.

It will be Knight’s first time breaking down the Hoosiers during a game as an ESPN analyst. He was part of the studio crew for a previous Indiana game at Madison Square Garden, but didn’t call the actual game.

If you’re Indiana, this is a big deal. Knight had to sign off on this, perhaps signaling he is ready to reconcile with the school. It’ll be interesting to see how Shulman draws him out about Indiana.

Veteran Knight watcher, Rick Bozich, wrote at WDRB.com in Louisville:

Knight-ologists will be breaking down the telecast like the Zapruder film, trying to determine if Knight’s decision to work the game signals a legitimate thaw in the icy relations that have existed between the coach and IU in the dozen years after he was fired.

My guess?

I don’t expect to see Knight in Assembly Hall this season, but this is a small step in closing the massive divide. If Knight’s only thoughts about IU were ugly and adversarial, he wouldn’t be working this game. He’d find a way to avoid IU again.

And one wise person who knows Knight well told me this several years ago: Bob Knight will make peace with Indiana when IU is back on top and he isn’t.

Terry Hutchens of Indystar.com writes:

Now, for all of you out there that are reading into this that because Knight is doing an IU game that it means he’s ready to ride on his white horse (with a red sweater probably) back to Bloomington and become part of the Indiana family again, I would say this: Relax, take a deep breath, calm yourself and don’t get carried away here. It’s one game, and it’s one game predicated by the fact that Indiana is the No. 1 team in the nation.  It was the preseason No. 1 team in the land for the first time since the 1979-80 team that Knight coached for the Hoosiers.

Could it be a first step to repairing relations? Maybe. But if I was someone at IU and hoping that would be the ultimate outcome here, I would have my doubts. It’s one game. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Hutchens then wrote of his last encounter with Knight:

Selfishly, I’m looking forward to see if he shakes my hand. I covered coach Knight his final two seasons at Indiana and he would actually had a pretty good professional relationship. But the last time I went to one of his speaking engagements where he met a receiving line afterwards and shook hands with former players and all of the old cronies, I decided to get in line and see if he acknowledge my presence. As he walked down the line, he shook hand after hand. He paused at the gentleman to my left and gave him a warm embrace. Then he looked at me. We made brief contact and … he kept right on walking and shook the hand of the person to my right. So I’m looking forward to seeing if I have any better luck Monday.

New IU National Sports Journalism director: young writers have advantage over veterans in market

Posted on by

Teaching sports journalism at the big U these days would seem to be as valuable as starting classes on how to make a typewriter.

Journalism is a dying industry, we’re told. Read about it in the papers. What’s left of them, that is.

Malcolm Moran is here to say don’t believe everything you read and hear. And listen to this: He contends in many respects the market never has been better for young journalists. So are the opportunities to make an immediate impact.

Moran has seen it up close as the Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society at the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism since 2006. And it isn’t just about young equaling cheaper.

“For the first time in the history of the industry, a 20-something journalist could have an advantage over a 40-something candidate,” Moran said.

In January, Moran will be molding those young writers as the new director of the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana. He takes over a program launched in 2009 by my old Tribune boss Tim Franklin. Moran said there are 100 students affiliated with the NJSC. Those students recently participated in compiling the hiring report card for the Black Coaches and Administrators Association, yet another example of the opportunity to make an early impact.

Moran obviously has the credentials with distinguished stops at the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and USA Today. He has covered more college bowl games and Final Fours than he cares to count.

Now Moran is making his presence felt on the academic side during a time of great transition for the profession. Here’s my Q/A.

What makes you say 20-somethings have an advantage over 40-somethings?

For the first time in the history of the industry, a 20-something journalist could have an advantage over a 40-something candidate. Graduates as recent as the class of 2007 have told me they feel as though they missed out on having the new technology included in their course work. If a younger candidate can meet all the timeless expectations of the industry, and demonstrate that he or she can tell stories across platforms, the assumption is that the candidate will handle the technology more easily than the more experienced veteran. Media outlets are willing to sacrifice institutional memory – and the higher salaries that comes with that – for more cost-effective, techno-savvy candidates. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just saying it’s happening.

But what about the job cuts in the market. Aren’t there diminished opportunities?

Yes, there is a distribution problem on the print side, but think about how many outlets that didn’t exist 10 years ago. There are staffers from our program at Penn State who are working at the Big Ten Network. When I started, the Big Ten Network was on the drawing board. ESPN.com was a small core of writers and a lot of wire copy 10-15 years ago. Now look at it.

In the spring of 2009, it seemed like there was no movement. The students who were graduating had a hard time finding jobs. But now we’re seeing more opportunities.

At Penn State, we had a student, Mark Viera, who wound up covering a lot of the Sandusky story for the New York Times. If you opened up the paper, you would assume he was a staff writer. He and Pete Thamel won the APSE award for breaking news. Those kinds of places would rarely use a free lancer 10-15 years ago. Now they do. The opportunity to make a name for yourself now is much greater.

Why would somebody want a sports journalism program as opposed to a regular journalism program?

Part of it is the nature of the industry and the changes we’ve seen. It’s so much more fragmented. Can a journalism major succeed in sports? Of course. However, last year, the students at Penn State covered the men’s Final Four, the BCS game, and the Olympics. If you’re 22 and have that on your resume, you’re in good shape.

We had nine students at the Olympics in London. They produced the digital newsletter daily for the USOC. There were only 15 U.S. media outlets that had more people in London than we did.

You can’t replicate what we did in London in a classroom. When we first got there, they were, ‘OK, what do we do now?’ By the end, they were veterans. It was fun to watch them discover that they can do this.

How is teaching sports journalism different now than 10 years ago?

It’s different than even three or four years ago. I guarantee you the word ‘tweet’ was nowhere to be found in my syllabus. Now I do a class on tweeting and how to use it in an intelligent way. We stress the same standards apply to a 140-character tweet as they do to a 2,000 word story.

Tweeting wasn’t on our radar three years ago, but if you don’t do it now, you’re not doing yourself justice.

What is the key for a young writer to get a job today?

You have to be able to cross every platform. You have to be able to tell your story in more ways than you used to. You can’t show up with a notebook in your pocket and expect to be relevant. You have to market yourself by demonstrating you can work across all the platforms. If you can do that and retain your core values, then you’re marketable.

What are your hopes for NSJC?

I’d like to grow the program and identify people who can make a difference. I have relationships with people they have relationships with. They’ve done a lot in a short period of time. I hope to be able to build upon it.