Ways to Start a Sports Columnist/Blogging/Reporting Career

You want my advice?

Go back to Bulgaria.

 

Important serious question: By "professionally published," do you mean as a columnist or a straight-sports reporting gig? Because the job paths for the two are pretty divergent at this point. If you want to be a sports columnist, at this point, my advice would be to just keep writing and working the best you can, and to be aggressive with marketing your own blog. Find a niche you can exploit for traffic via decent, or even better, quality content. (i.e. Cot of Cot's Baseball Contracts has managed to parlay that into various partnerships with professional sites like Baseball Prospectus, which itself started as stat geeks exchanging e-mails on the Internet, I believe.)

 

Why not start a "Fire Tommy Tuberville" blog. That should generate a lot of interest.

 

Don't enter the field because you love sports. Enter the field because you love journalism.

 

This.

 

They spared no expense on the MVP trophies

 

It's 2012, I've been in sports journalism for 33 years, I read the OP, I'm reading all the comments ... and I have absolutely no idea what to say right nowl.

 

You'd think someone with a PR degree would know better than to get into sports writing.

 

True sports journalism doesn't give a crap about you being a die hard sports fan. That's not to say that's not a good thing, but working in sports is a lot different from loving sports. I wish there was a way to explain this to every young wannabe where'd they would understand it without having to experience it.
It's really amazing how little sports you actually get to see once you work in sports. And it's amazing how little you want to see once you've worked in sports any amount of time.
Sports journalism is an art. It's not about loving the game. It's more often about trying to file a 16-inch gamer by 11 p.m. on a game that tipped off at 7:30 p.m. and have it flow cleanly.
It's about knowing how to deal with a coach who is going to take it out on you that his team just lost the state title game when a his kid dropped a wide open pass in the end zone as time expires.
It's about trying to find an angle for a feature story on the best point guard in your state only to realize this kid is dumber than a stump and gives you nothing more than a three word answer for every question you ask.
It's about making 100 phone calls a day trying to get confirmation of a firing/hiring/forfeit or the likes, only to have 99 of those calls go unanswered/unreturned/dead ended.
It's about years of working crappy afternoon to evening hours 5 days a week, including weekends and giving up what little you have of a social life.
It's about knowing Game 7 of the World Series is on and your favorite team is playing, but you are assigned to cover a high school basketball game, so you never see it.
Have a passion to be able to deliver a piece of prose you think is an award winner in all of the above scenarios, and then you may be able to make it in the world of sports journalism.

But when you do, just don't expect to get paid much for your efforts.
And I won't even go into page work, high school stadium officials telling you they want to go home so you have to leave the press box or parents and fans who don't care one iota about you going through any of that to get your job done.

 

Well I know it doesn't pay well, but I just wanted to get people's input on their experiences and advice and what not. I got a great salary right now ,but I'm just bored of my desk job and I'm not gaining anything out of it. I just refer to do something I would have interest in. I enjoy writing and I enjoy sports. It won't be my full-time day job, but I wanted it to be something I can do on a side. But I appreciated everyones opinions.

 

Freelance for $30-$50 a story. You'll be able to write without worrying about the other crap that needs to be done.