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WEEK of NOVEMBER 3, 2003 |
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Psyched about Syken by Jeffrey Stanley Sports Illustrated reporter Bill Syken was the Upper School assembly speaker recently, and he was clearly a hit with students, who were just as interested in his NFL and NBA picks as they were in his writing career. Syken, who holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Columbia University and a graduate degree from the acclaimed journalism program at the University of Missouri, has been a reporter for 10 years, but is relatively new to sports writing. He started out at a small newspaper in Pennsylvania, where on any given day, he explained, “I would have to write a story about a double murder in the morning and cover a horticulture show in the afternoon.” Today he’s more apt to fly 18 hours to American Samoa to uncover why big colleges are so interested in the giant football players of this tiny island in the South Pacific (look for his story in the November 3rd issue of Sports Illustrated).
The soft-spoken and professorial—yet wildly entertaining—Syken also brought a series of amusing overheads to accompany his dry wit. One photo (at left) was taken at tailgate party he covered last week in Mississippi at Jackson State University’s football game against Southern University. The photo depicts a die-hard Jackson State fan standing proudly next to his gigantic, multi-leveled home-made barbecue converted from an antique refrigerator. The fan was cooking “drunken chicken” on the grill, which consisted of open cans of beer shoved inside the chicken. Syken explained, “The beer had two purposes: One was to keep the chicken moist as it cooked, and the other was to completely rob the chicken of its dignity.” Syken spoke about the challenges of reporting, not just in the sports arena, but for any publication, explaining to students that his biggest obstacle is to “find a story that hasn’t already been written a hundred times” (hence his recent trip to the South Pacific). He also urged any students interested in pursuing a career in journalism to be “neurotic about accuracy.” The assembly concluded in a heated Q&A with students and faculty about why athletes have gotten so physically large in recent years. Then David Gardella and the athletics department presented Syken with a BFS State Basketball Champs t-shirt. Afterward, Syken sat in on Derek Chase’s 11th grade English class to talk further with students about careers in journalism. |
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