What's the cringiest thing you've written?

Mom didn’t think that was funny but I do.

 

Fuck that coach.

It's not like these kids moved away over the summer. The info was apparently correct for the preview in the tab, right?

If you have to cover more than a half dozen schools, it gets pretty cumbersome to stay up to date when kids move days before the season, transfer, are academically ineligible, etc. without a heads up from the coach or someone at the school. Especially since this occurred in the days before social media.

Coaches like the one in your story think the world revolves around them and are one of the many things wrong with youth sports.

 

Remined of the time I was laying out pages Sunday night and we heard a football player for a local school had died in a crash. First thing I did was hand the football mug file over to the newsies. We were still shooting film then. Fortunately (for us, not the kid or his family, of course), all id's were correct. But this is the business we're in, to do that instinctively.

 

That's not cringeworthy, that's awesome!

 

After 20 years in this business, I'd say my resume.

 

I think most college papers were designed for professional writers to get the bad stuff out of the way while they're young, so they don't do it in the big leagues.

For me, my very first byline was about the college baseball team's fall training season, but I failed to recognize it was just training camp. The lede I wrote was, "While Gator gridiron mania is the hot topic of the day, another team has begun playing quietly in its wake."

At least four cliches and jargonish expressions. Make me shudder in retrospect. But they eventually hired me onto the paper staff nonetheless.

Another admission is quoting lyrics from an obscure B-side song as the lede to a football sidebar in my senior year. Double shudder.

 

I worked a half-dozen or so Star Trek references into my master's thesis. I wish I could eat every page on which one of them appeared.

 

From time to time, I've either re-read my college editorials or been reminded of what I wrote. I absolutely now side my the administrators and professors who believed that I was a little twerp.

 

“Dumb things we wrote in college” could warrant its own board under “journalism topics.”

I once wrote that a guy on our P5 college basketball team proved “all you needed to get a free ride here is an ugly left-hand hook shot.”

Which... wasn't even a good line. He did not appreciate this, of course. I went to do a feature on him a few weeks later and he wouldn’t talk to me. First time that had happened to me.

Then, one night a few months later he stumbled into a party at my fraternity house. I was out at the bars, but all my good ol’ buddies there told him I lived there, even let him into my room, where he was waiting when I got home an hour or so later.

Fortunately he didn’t kill me and we made up and all was well.

Believe it or not I did not go on to be a columnist in this business.

 

That is hilarious!

 

Agreed!

 

I quoted a dead guy once. Well, the coach who replaced him and was alive but the school didn't take the original coach off the roster and as a piddly stringer had no idea. This came weeks after I quoted the fired coach on another team, well the actual interm, but again didn't know. An awesome copy editor at the mid-sized metro paper who I am still friends with today caught both and neither made it to print.

I was horrified with each amd can only imagine what would have happened if they did make print, especially the dead coach. I actually made it a point to freaking make sure the coach I was talking to was actually what the roster said the rest of the time I covered preps if it was someone I had no idea who they were. Not bad practice in general but cumbersome with many games covered over a week. Went on to work in news at that paper and move up the editorial ranks in OK fashion.

On a didn't double check a form once called a boy a girl in an athlete of the week write up. It was just honorable mentions that were given to me by other writers and it just said track and I guessed wrong on the gender of the name I suppose! Nevermind it would have taken two seconds to check. His mom was pissed. Very much so. He thought it was hilarious so I guess that's good.

On one of my first ever published sports stories the university volleyball team, which is and has been a nationally ranked program, was rebuilding and fairly easily beat some mid off the road, non power team in the opener and my lede was, College volleyball team proved it's for real. Yeah, they struggled a lot that year so not so much.

I could go on and on.