Suffering through hundreds of rejection letters without giving up. Volunteering to cover a struggling sports team for no money and little fan interest. Working for hot dogs and soda for the opportunity to write about your college football team.
Breaking into sports marketing is hard, according to a team of experts assembled by Christian Fauria, a two-time Super Bowl champion tight end, former sports radio broadcaster, and current Professional in Residence at Bryant. But to quote the baseball movie A League of Their Own, “The hard is what makes it great.”
This spring, Fauria, who teaches within the College of Arts and Sciences’ Communication and Language Studies department, moderated a panel discussion featuring award-winning author and sportswriter Mike Reiss, New England Patriots Vice President of Media Relations Stacey James, and Annabelle Hasselbeck, a two-time collegiate national champion in lacrosse and 2024 graduate of Boston College who now hosts a podcast on faith and sports.
“When I was at the University of Colorado, my old coach Bill McCartney would start every off season with three questions: ‘Who are we?’ ‘Where are we going?’ And ‘How are we going to get there?’” recalled Fauria. “These are the questions you need to ask yourself. ‘What do you want?’ ‘How badly do you want it?’ and ‘What are you prepared to do?’”
Lean on resiliency over rejection
Reiss sat before the audience with a pile of papers on his lap — all the rejection letters he’s held onto despite a career that has spanned working for the Patriots, writing for local newspapers and the Boston Globe, and now reporting for ESPN and on Boston sports radio and TV.
Entering the job market, Reiss thought his experience reporting for his high school and college newspapers would be enough to get his foot in the door; more than 100 newspapers across the country believed otherwise. Networking was what got Reiss his first job: a brother of a friend knew the Patriots’ in-house newspaper editor, who was about to launch a new team news website.
“For $20,000 a year I said I would love to interview for that job,” recalled Reiss. After a few years at the Patriots, Reiss reached out to a sports editor at the Boston Globe — his dream job at the time — for advice.
“His suggestion was, ‘What you're doing is great, but we'd like to see you at an independent newspaper, not working for the Patriots,’” Reiss remembered. “So, I went to the local newspaper I had written for in high school and reported on the Patriots for six years.” The experience led to a four-year stint at the Globe, which in turn served as a springboard for his current job at ESPN.
James’ 33-year career with the Patriots has included the team’s Tom Brady/Bill Belichick dynasty years; he has six Super Bowl rings given in recognition for his service to the team.
That kind of success was far from the mind of an 18-year-old at the University of Washington who was looking for a work-study job that might appeal to a self-described ‘sports geek.’
“There was something called sports information [assistant]; I had no idea what that was, but it sounded better than washing test tubes or cleaning the barns at an agricultural school,” he said. “I sent out press releases that the sports information department wrote. The files of every athlete that ever played at Washington State were in their office, and I thought that was amazing, so I volunteered to come in and reorganize the files.”
One day, the director of the department asked James if he had ever kept stats during a football game (he had, as a fan of the Seattle Seahawks), which led him to a perch in the team’s broadcast booth.
“My conversation with my mom after the game was, ‘You're not going to believe this: I got into the game for free. They gave me a hot dog and a soda,’” said James. “They paid me $20 — but I got paid to go to a football game. I said to myself, ‘I don't know what this is, but it’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.’”
I got paid to go to a football game. I said to myself, ‘I don't know what this is, but it’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.’”
Determination makes a difference
When James reached out to the Patriots for a job in 1992, the team promised to get in touch to fly him to New England for an interview. “I didn't go to the bathroom for four days waiting for that phone to ring,” he said. “I came to find out they ended up hiring the intern that was already there. If I had just flown out and shown up on their doorstep, I probably would have been hired."
He didn't let the rejection change his pursuit.
“I knew that they felt guilty that they didn't call me back, and now I had someone at the Patriots that I had built a relationship with. So, I kept in contact, and six months later they had another opening. And I've been there since,” he said.
Build a portfolio with hustle
Hasselbeck, the daughter of a former NFL quarterback, had built-in family connections in pro sports that most other student-athletes lack. But she also put in plenty of thankless hours to set herself up for a sports communications career.
“I took my senior year to interview different athletes at Boston College,” she said. “I would finish lacrosse practice and be sprinting to an interview. My makeup was sweating off my face, but I loved the hustle, going to practice, studying the players. I realized that if I liked the hard work then this was something that I should be moving toward.”
"My makeup was sweating off my face, but I loved the hustle, going to practice, studying the players. I realized that if I liked the hard work then this was something that I should be moving toward.”
Hasselbeck initially covered BC’s football team, which was struggling through a difficult year. She slowly built a relationship with the school’s athletic department and recruited a friend to be her videographer.
“My goal was to create a portfolio and to get practice,” she said, “but also to show Boston College who the players were under the helmet, and to give the school something to be happy about in a tough season.”
Producing the podcast at BC helped Hasselbeck land a gig as co-host of a NESN sports podcast and, ultimately, her current job with Sports Spectrum as a podcast host.
“Sports Spectrum came to me when this job did not exist and said, ‘We’d love you to do for us what you're doing for BC, interviewing different college athletes.’ What's cool is that I'm talking to athletes about sports and about their faith, which was a huge part of my lacrosse experience and my whole athletic career,” Hasselbeck said.
Create trusting relationships with honesty, professionalism
Connecting with athletes and sources is an important skill for anyone interested in sports communication. Reiss makes a point of introducing himself to every new Patriots player and explaining his job to them: “I'm going to be here every day in the locker room, and my job is to be as fair and objective as possible on what's happening with the team and getting people who follow the team to understand what's going on.”
“Be accountable,” Reiss added. “None of us are perfect. I'm going to make mistakes. It’s probably the first thing I would say to you when you come into the locker room: ‘I’m going to try to get it right, if I get it wrong it's not going to be for a lack of effort.’”
James said preparation and professionalism are fundamental to success in sports communication. “I respect any reporter who is thorough and tries their best to present two sides to a story,” he said. “What I don't like is when I have to try to counter a narrative that's out there because the reporter didn't even check with me.”
Be ready to grind
A good work ethic is respected in the sports industry, whether you’re a player, team representative, or a member of the media, panelists agreed.
“If you're covering baseball, you're probably at the ballpark until 1 a.m. every night and then back to work around nine or 10 in the morning,” said James. “It doesn't leave you much of a social life. At a young age, the expectation is that you're coming in ready to grind. A lot of people aren’t, so there's a huge weed-out. Other people that you graduate with are doubling your income and doing a lot of fun things on the weekend, but you love what you do, and you’re getting paid to do it.
"Other people that you graduate with are doubling your income and doing a lot of fun things on the weekend, but you love what you do, and you’re getting paid to do it."
“At my desk I have pictures of Jim Zorn, Dave Kreig, and Steve Largent,” noted James. “These were my boyhood idols. When I'm driving home after the worst day I've had all year, I can remind myself that maybe Bill Belichick yelled at me today, but what would the 15-year-old Stacey say if that was the job description I was getting?
"I’ve got it pretty good.”
