Thanks to our sponsor Inteleca for helping bring back Q's Take my weekly look at things around GT and college sports from my vantage.
As I reflect on Mother's Day sitting around with my wife and youngest son it was my mother who actually helped set me on the path to become a sports journalist and I thank her for that today. My parents divorced prior to my 8th birthday and my dad ended up moving away to chase college teaching positions across the country. My older brother was done with his football and track career around the same time due to a gruesome ankle injury throwing the shotput. That shifted me a little bit away from sports.
I was getting into music which is still a clear love and started playing double bass in orchestra around that time. Still, my mom to her credit made me play every sport they offered for boys at the YMCA to figure out what I liked and to essentially have afterschool care as well since you could walk from my elementary school to the Y. It gave me something to do most of the time while she was working in the library at UGA.
Also, my mom would take me to various sporting events at UGA or on campus like men's basketball, women's basketball, and baseball which we had season tickets for, but never college football. She loathed the UGA football program as did much of her fellow faculty at the time. We also went to Braves games, saw the Harlem Globetrotters and things like Rodeos and I got a pretty full experience except for football growing up. I was also more interested in the NFL at the time and playing Techmo Bowl, but we would watch Texas Longhorn games on TV on Saturdays for the Red River Shootout or one or two other big games back in the day when most games were not televised. My mom went to UT as a grad student and she was a fan as was my dad and older brother. That was the first college allegiance I had despite living 20 minutes from the UGA campus.
Those broad experiences and my love of baseball pushed me to listen to sports talk radio. Because Athens was a small college town there was one station locally 960 AM that carried a few programs, but at night broadcasted syndicated radio in the evening when the AM station would power down. We lived close enough to pull the signal in our small house and I became obsessed with the weird personalities on the radio and my mom would let me listen at night and sometimes I would stay up really late listening to the One-on-One Sports Network and the one I remember the most was a guy named Papa Joe Chevalier who was a Las Vegas-based sports radio host on that network for about 10-12 years. Between that and the prime days of ESPN, I developed my love of sports. My mom bought subscriptions to the Sporting News mainly to fuel my interest in baseball stats (that was the only way other than a daily newspaper to get baseball stats pre-internet) and Sports Illustrated when it was a classic. The swimsuit issue was a bonus that didn't offend my mother thankfully.
All along my mom supported my interest in sports talk radio and sports overall. When interleague play began she would get a hotel by Lenox for several days so I could watch my beloved Red Sox play the Braves for the first time and attend every single game of the first three-game series in Atlanta. We went to opening day several years in a row including the first at Turner Field and while I was more of a Cubs/Red Sox fan I had a love of the 90s Braves and their prolific pitching staff that remains a fond memory to this day.
When I was trying to decide what to do with my life in college and studying a double major in journalism and psychology, my mom and my stepfather both made a point of asking me about what I loved to do rather than focusing on what would make me the most money. My stepfather wanted me to open a restaurant because of my third great love of cooking and my mom wanted me to get into sports journalism.
I've detailed the story many times of how I broke into Rivals and used radio as a platform to jump into writing then cutting my teeth in the deep end of the pool over the years. I won't bore you with that again, but all along my mom was supportive and always excited about the opportunities. She follows me quietly on Twitter and reads some of the content we produce here and has always been proud of the work that I put in along the way. So I say thanks to my mother for being the supporter that has led to JOL's existence in 2024 and hopefully many years to come.
KQ
As I reflect on Mother's Day sitting around with my wife and youngest son it was my mother who actually helped set me on the path to become a sports journalist and I thank her for that today. My parents divorced prior to my 8th birthday and my dad ended up moving away to chase college teaching positions across the country. My older brother was done with his football and track career around the same time due to a gruesome ankle injury throwing the shotput. That shifted me a little bit away from sports.
I was getting into music which is still a clear love and started playing double bass in orchestra around that time. Still, my mom to her credit made me play every sport they offered for boys at the YMCA to figure out what I liked and to essentially have afterschool care as well since you could walk from my elementary school to the Y. It gave me something to do most of the time while she was working in the library at UGA.
Also, my mom would take me to various sporting events at UGA or on campus like men's basketball, women's basketball, and baseball which we had season tickets for, but never college football. She loathed the UGA football program as did much of her fellow faculty at the time. We also went to Braves games, saw the Harlem Globetrotters and things like Rodeos and I got a pretty full experience except for football growing up. I was also more interested in the NFL at the time and playing Techmo Bowl, but we would watch Texas Longhorn games on TV on Saturdays for the Red River Shootout or one or two other big games back in the day when most games were not televised. My mom went to UT as a grad student and she was a fan as was my dad and older brother. That was the first college allegiance I had despite living 20 minutes from the UGA campus.
Those broad experiences and my love of baseball pushed me to listen to sports talk radio. Because Athens was a small college town there was one station locally 960 AM that carried a few programs, but at night broadcasted syndicated radio in the evening when the AM station would power down. We lived close enough to pull the signal in our small house and I became obsessed with the weird personalities on the radio and my mom would let me listen at night and sometimes I would stay up really late listening to the One-on-One Sports Network and the one I remember the most was a guy named Papa Joe Chevalier who was a Las Vegas-based sports radio host on that network for about 10-12 years. Between that and the prime days of ESPN, I developed my love of sports. My mom bought subscriptions to the Sporting News mainly to fuel my interest in baseball stats (that was the only way other than a daily newspaper to get baseball stats pre-internet) and Sports Illustrated when it was a classic. The swimsuit issue was a bonus that didn't offend my mother thankfully.
All along my mom supported my interest in sports talk radio and sports overall. When interleague play began she would get a hotel by Lenox for several days so I could watch my beloved Red Sox play the Braves for the first time and attend every single game of the first three-game series in Atlanta. We went to opening day several years in a row including the first at Turner Field and while I was more of a Cubs/Red Sox fan I had a love of the 90s Braves and their prolific pitching staff that remains a fond memory to this day.
When I was trying to decide what to do with my life in college and studying a double major in journalism and psychology, my mom and my stepfather both made a point of asking me about what I loved to do rather than focusing on what would make me the most money. My stepfather wanted me to open a restaurant because of my third great love of cooking and my mom wanted me to get into sports journalism.
I've detailed the story many times of how I broke into Rivals and used radio as a platform to jump into writing then cutting my teeth in the deep end of the pool over the years. I won't bore you with that again, but all along my mom was supportive and always excited about the opportunities. She follows me quietly on Twitter and reads some of the content we produce here and has always been proud of the work that I put in along the way. So I say thanks to my mother for being the supporter that has led to JOL's existence in 2024 and hopefully many years to come.
KQ
