One year later, explaining my decision to leave sports writing; the only job I ever wanted
I remember a day I decided that I needed to get out of sports writing. I say a day, and not the day, because I experienced a couple of them during my five years on the Auburn beat. And no, Bryan Harsin’s Christmas Eve press conference was not one of them.
This day was Jan. 8, 2021. Harsin was in the midst of filling out his Auburn football coaching staff. I was still at my parents’ house in Connecticut, too scared drive back to Alabama for fear that I’d be on the highway when a hire was made. I was spending 12 hours a day holed up in the makeshift office in my childhood bedroom, eyes glued to my phone and laptop.
Eventually, though, my mother dragged me out into the real world. Something along the lines of you’ve been sitting in here all day, you have to take a break and do something else. Our big adventure was taking a drive to pick up takeout for dinner (remember, these were still COVID times). On our way back, I got a text from an Auburn spokesman. 5 minutes.
I was still 10 minutes away. By the time I got out of my car, Auburn had announced the hire of Zac Etheridge and retention of Cadillac Williams. I had pre-written only one of those stories. So while my parents and sister sat down to eat the burgers we picked up, I sprinted back to my room and spent the next hour-plus writing and publishing those stories. I ate alone.
And I remember being really angry about the whole thing. I mean, truly furious. And not at Harsin or Auburn or anyone else, but at myself. I was not at my laptop when news broke. My stories published 10 minutes later than everyone else’s. In that moment, I felt like I had failed.
Today marks one year since I announced that I would be leaving not only my job as the Auburn beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser, but sports journalism all together. When I did, I said there were a lot of reasons why I decided to leave the industry, and that I might share them someday. I’ve had pieces of this story swimming around my head ever since.
I don’t know how many people will care enough to read all of this. Because I’ll warn you now: I went long here. Long enough that it would truly piss off my former editor, who got cranky any time I wrote more than 600 words (which was literally every time). I wrote this for me as much as I wrote it for anyone else. It felt good to finally put all these thoughts down on paper.
But if you are reading, I want to make something clear from the jump: Nothing I’ve written here is a complaint. I understood what covering Auburn would be like when I joined the Opelika-Auburn News in 2016. The hours were going to be long, the pay was going to be crap, and the demand was going be high. At the time, I did not care. Sportswriter was the only job I ever wanted once I joined the high school newspaper my junior year. Getting to cover a major SEC program like Auburn was an absolute dream come true for me.
And believe me when I tell you that, when I started, I was all the way all-in on covering Auburn. It wasn’t just my job; it was my identity. I rarely took even a single day off between the start of fall camp and the end of baseball season. I wanted my name to be on top of every story, big or small. I was on vacation when Jarrett Stidham committed, surrounded by friends and family who I hadn’t seen in more than a year, and I did not hesitate to pull out my laptop, write a breaking story live from the dinner table, eat, and then start on an analysis piece. I didn’t need to — my editor at the time probably would have jumped on it if I asked. But I wanted to, and there was no telling me no.
The problem with that level of dedication, I later found out, is that it is entirely unsustainable. Covering a major college beat is relentless. Especially one like Auburn, where insanity and scandal seem to constantly bubble just under the surface. Over time, my excitement over getting to cover a big story began to morph into dread that the next one was lurking just around the corner. I used to bring my laptop in the car anytime I went anywhere, even if it was just to grab groceries. It was necessary.
Recruits committed on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Jay Jacobs happened to step down the day the entire beat was traveling to Texas A&M. Jack Bicknell Jr. was hired during the second quarter of the CFP title game. I was at Tacorita when Steven Leath resigned at 9 p.m. on a Friday. I was at Halftime when Kenny Dillingham was named offensive coordinator at 10 p.m. on a Sunday. I was enjoying the Burger Wars in Opelika on a Saturday afternoon when JT Thor declared for the NBA Draft. I didn’t work 24 hours a day, but I felt like I had to be “on” for all of them. You never knew when something was going to happen.
Eventually, the grind really started to affect me. The things I should have loved about sports writing — covering games, talking to athletes and coaches, telling stories — became the things I hated most. Even the excitement about getting to travel started to wane. I wanted games to be blowouts so they were less stressful. I wanted press conferences to end quickly so there was less I felt I needed to write about. I didn’t want to make the extra phone call to add a voice to a feature story. I just wanted everything to stop.
After a while, that feeling of failure I mentioned above started to become something I carried with me almost daily. I was holding myself to a standard of perfection no mortal could possibly reach. I wanted to have the smartest analysis, write the best features and instantly react to every bit of news. Obviously, that’s an impossible ask given the depth, talent and experience of the Auburn beat. But I couldn’t shake what I was feeling.
The result was that I was frozen with indecision every time I had to write postgame analysis, because I didn’t trust myself to write the right thing. I got angry any time someone on the beat wrote a story I didn’t think of, because it made me feel like a fraud. I completely lost the ability to feel happy about my performance covering Auburn. The best I could muster was a feeling of relief when I didn’t hate the story I just finished writing.
My job was to watch sports (a thing I have loved my whole life) and write stories (a passion I’ve had since high school) alongside what was truly great group of people covering Auburn. And still, I was depressed.
I know that these feelings are not unique to me. So many people feel sad or frustrated at their job, whether it’s because of the work, their boss, the hours, compensation or any number of things. Other sportswriters I’ve spoken to have felt some version of imposter syndrome before. Everyone deals with stress at some point or another.
The problem, for me, was that I felt like there would be no escaping those feelings unless I changed careers. Because there was no “off” switch. News doesn’t adhere to a 9–5 schedule or wait until you get back from vacation. Obviously, there are plenty of people who are able to cope with that. The veterans of the Auburn beat have been doing this for multiple decades, starting and raising families along the way. I didn’t feel like that was in the cards for me.
My parents came to visit me in Auburn early last May, at a time when very little was going on sports-wise — spring football practice and the NFL Draft were over, and the baseball team had no midweek game. I asked for Monday off, a request my editor happily granted. But while my parents played 18 holes of golf that day, I managed only 14. Two Auburn football players entered the transfer portal while we were on the course. Neither was significant, but it was news, and I felt it was my job was to cover it. I wrote both stories from my phone in the golf cart. I also felt the urge to write a column when I got home. That’s three stories on a day off.
A month later, in June, I requested a week of vacation. And as I talked to my editor about my trip, he said something along the lines of, “You know, if something crazy happens, like someone getting arrested or fired, I may ask you to come off the golf course and work.” If any other boss in any other industry said that to an employee, that employee would (and should) say, “um, absolutely not, I am on vacation.” I, though, said of course, I will absolutely jump back online if something happens.
That felt completely normal to me. So did filing two stories from my phone on a golf course on my day off. I never had a partner on the Auburn beat, so whenever there was a story to write, I wrote it. That was the job. There wasn’t time for much else.
It took leaving journalism all together for me to realize just how negatively all of that was affecting every aspect of my non-professional life. Which only barely existed. I was often scared to play golf, my favorite hobby, because I didn’t want to be offline for too long. I dated, but pushed any potential relationships away because I felt I needed to focus on work.
If the COVID-19 pandemic did not interrupt the entire world in 2020, I almost certainly would have skipped the weddings of both my cousin and a friend who I have known since we were in diapers. One was supposed to get married during the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament, and the other the Saturday Auburn football was scheduled to play Georgia. Those are just sacrifices I would have felt I had to make.
Looking back on that now, it feels insane that I ever thought that way. This has been confirmed by my new coworkers, who look at me like I’m insane whenever I tell them about my last job. My boss isn’t a sports person. She couldn’t understand why I was so excited just to have weekends off. When I explained to her that I used to work basically every single Saturday from September through March, she was incredulous.
I still write for a living. I still work hard. I’m still a perfectionist. But my life has boundaries now. My job is something I do on weekdays, rather than who I am. The workday is 9 to 5, and then it ends. We even work half days on Fridays during the summer, which is a nice treat. Yes, there is a lot less excitement, a lot less travel for work and almost zero reason for me to still have a Twitter following. But there are also far fewer surprises, and nothing that can’t wait until 9 a.m. the next day.
It has allowed me to live a life I never thought I’d have time for. After seven years chasing journalism jobs to Florida and then Alabama, I’m back in my home state living minutes away from family and lifelong friends. I’m in a relationship. I say yes to plans without having to check Auburn’s schedule first. I don’t feel the need to compulsively scroll Twitter every 10 minutes. I don’t even open my laptop on weekends, let alone bring it with me when I leave my apartment.
I went to both those weddings, too. My friend rescheduled hers for Oct. 2 of last year — the day Auburn played LSU in Baton Rouge. I saw Bo Nix’s scramble drill on my phone after getting an ESPN alert about it, then caught end of the game from the lobby bar. I watched less than three minutes total.
Friends and family members often ask me if I miss being a beat writer. I didn’t know what my answer would be when I first left the industry last year, but I know it with 100% certainty now.
No. I don’t miss it at all.
Now, that’s not to say I don’t miss parts of my old life. I do miss the people. I miss the camaraderie of the beat, and all the time spent sitting around cracking jokes. I miss the company paying for me to go on road trips and experience new cities. I miss Southern food. I miss paying less than half the rent for more than twice as much space.
But if you’re asking me if I miss being in the press box, doing postgame interviews and frantically trying to file stories on deadline, then absolutely not. I don’t miss that even a little bit. I thought I might. That I’d feel the itch once football and basketball season rolled back around. But it never happened.
Maybe that would have been different at a different publication or on a different beat. While I was actively looking to get out of journalism last June, I got a call from someone in South Carolina asking if I would be interested in interviewing for a job covering Clemson. I definitely thought about it for a moment. But that ended up being the same day I got offered the job I have now. As soon as that happened, I knew exactly where I wanted to be.
I’m still a rabid sports fan. I watched more college football and basketball this year than I did during any of the years I actually covered Auburn, probably because it stopped feeling like work became fun again. I ended up watching pretty much every Auburn football and basketball game during the 2021–22 season, too. But instead of writing for 3–4 hours after they ended, I got to turn the TV off and enjoy the rest of my day. That feeling is bliss.
I don’t know if anyone is still reading at this point. But if you are, I’ll finish with this: I’m glad I got to be sportswriter. I’m glad I got to live out a dream. Covering Auburn took me to a CFP National Championship (because Alabama was there, sorry), a Final Four and a College World Series, which are experiences that I’ll never forget.
But one year after leaving the only job I ever wanted, I’m happy to report that I made the right choice.
