A buddy sent me this nugget from the Woj story about him leaving ESPN today.

And I read it as I take a break from editing golf photos, a few days after covering a game with a rain delay where the stats did not add up. I think I eventually got them close after going back on film.

I was a kid who knew since junior high I wanted to be involved in sports somehow and journalism specifically. I have said it before, but sports are what likely kept me out of jail and saved my life. I am well aware I could have taken a completely different path with a much worse outcome.

Still, I never thought back then it would be as a prep sports reporter. Even through college, and despite changing majors several times, I wanted to work for ESPN. Not hosting Sportscenter or even reporting. I always assumed I would be a research guy. The guy looking up what dudes hit on Tuesdays in August when the temp was above 87 degrees. The Elias Sports Bureau or something. But…not covering sports for a small town newspaper. That wasn’t the plan. I thought I would do “bigger and better.”

I started with the student newspaper at Flora High School, with journalism class my first semester as a sophomore leading to 2 1/2 years on the Locust Log newspaper staff. I got a summer job developing photos at the Clay County Advocate when I was 15, riding my bike up to the office every morning to beat the reporters in so I could have the developer set up and ready to roll when they came in with their film. My Army training meant taking a year off between high school and the start of college. I got hired at a local radio station, and then another radio and then television station. I did mostly board work and did camera work for local sports broadcasts.

I eventually started calling games for my third radio station, which I did part time my last couple of years of college and a couple years after before that station folded. The same month the station folded, I lost a big contract with the warranty company I was also working for at the time doing in-home computer repair. That combination led me back to my hometown, my tail tucked between my legs as I moved back into my mom’s house.

Shortly after, I saw the Advocate-Press was hiring. I talked to Smitty and the rest, as they say, was history. I started on the obits, like most reporters did back then. Feature stories, what little cops and court we did. City councils, village boards, school boards, etc. Smitty started sending me sports stuff. I’m not sure if that was a favor to me, or a favor to him. He was editor and sports both at the time. I would learn on a couple of different occasions in the future how much that can suck.

I eventually did just that at the Advocate, editor and sports, after Smitty moved on to buy another paper. I burnt out quickly. I was over my head. Only, I didn’t realize it at the time. My life motto is “head down, chin up, move forward”. Next task at hand. Then next task.

Then some guy approached me at a ballgame and wanted to know if I was interested in coming down to Fairfield. I wasn’t. I was in charge of a daily paper in my hometown. I grew up hating Fairfield. They kicked our butt. It didn’t help that what I still consider the best athletic class FCHS every had was my class and I played for the opposition. Ah the irony of who all would become some of my closest friends down the road.

But, back to the Wayne County Press. Smitty convinced me to take the job.

“Weez, you are out of high school. Get over the rivalry bullshit. You want that job.”

So, I took that job. But I took it with my sites on what would be next. I wasn’t a smalltown sports reporter. I was meant for bigger, better. I told myself two years, and I was gone. Or so I thought. That was in 2005.

Here is the thing. Opportunities for “bigger and better” did come along. I eventually had job offers to go do sports at other places. Bigger towns, bigger markets. But by the time they did, I had grown to understand my role as a smalltown sports reporter and had grown to appreciate it for what it was. It’s a chance to give back to kids what I got as a kid. I grew to eventually no longer desire to work in pro or college sports. Because the job became about the kids. I did not remain a smalltown sports reporter because I “never made it” or because I lacked the skills to move on. I remained because my professional priorities changed.

Even after I got married and my personal priorities changed, the kids were still the center. I left the paper for a job that pays better and allows me more freedom. I always assumed Sarah’s job would take her somewhere else, bigger and better. Turns out, she appears to be on the same path I wound up on. Bigger and better may not always be better. Sometimes, we don’t choose our path. Our path chooses us.

I have no idea how fulfilled I would have been had I moved on to “bigger and better” as I had originally desired. But I have a feeling probably not as much as I wound up sticking to this path. Doing both jobs the last five-plus years has led to serious burnout the last couple of years. Springs spent debating if I was going to continue to do the late nights getting caught up. Crawling into bed well after my wife has said good night. The early mornings getting caught up before firing up the laptop for the “real job”.

But then I circle back to the kids. There have been ebbs and flows. Last year’s senior class was the most special to Sarah and I that I have had in a now 30-year career. It comes and goes. But I can’t imagine it being any other way.

And these are the things I find myself pondering when I see Woj comparing the path that chose me versus the one he chose.

So yeah, I don’t know what Rick Ankiel hit on Tuesdays in August or how many rebounds Byron Houston had against zone defense, but I know what kind of a kid Emersyn Robbins is. I can tell you which kids will show up to help a couple old people move a gym out of a basement. I can tell you which kids have self-doubt, which kids are way too overconfident, and can even tell you a few who mask the first by portraying the second, a specialty of mine. I can tell you which kid can turn a joke about robbing a liquor store into a running joke that lasts a decade-plus and starts the Uncle Weez era. And that’s better than any nugget I probably would have learned had I moved on to “bigger and better”.

I didn’t choose the thug life, the thug life chose me.