Spec Sports: Exuding sexuality since 2005

I’ve written this column in my head about 400 times, and it changes every time.

I suppose that, when I send in the final version and then read it the next day, I’ll still want to change it. Some things will work, some things won’t, and I’ll mentally rewrite this column another 400 times, because no one column will ever do four years at Spectator justice.

In four years here, I’ve written close to 150 stories and columns, most of them on the night they were due in a back office in the Spectator building after the assigned writer flaked. I’ve covered every varsity sport on this campus, just about every varsity sport on the seven other Ivy campuses, and a handful of club sports to boot. I’ve sent out what feels like a trillion media requests to every Ivy school, even the ones that don’t answer you back (here’s looking at you, Princeton). I’ve been upbraided by a number of coaches, just about everyone on the Sports Information staff at Columbia Athletics, and M. Dianne Murphy herself on three separate occasions. I even traveled to Providence and back on the same day for a basketball game, taking a four-hour bus ride from Rhode Island to New York that included a stop at Foxwoods Casino to pick up some late-night gamblers headed home for the day.

If an average weeknight at Spec for the Sports editor begins at 8 p.m. and ends at 1 a.m., and the average Sunday and Thursday night at the office last from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m., then I spent just about 18 hours per week at the office as one-half of an editing tandem for two full semesters. By my math, that’s 72 hours per month, or 216 hours per semester, or 432 hours out of a full one-year term. That adds up to 18 full 24-hour days simply of being in the office. And that’s just one year as Sports editor, not taking into account the year spent as an associate editor or the semester as a deputy, or the hours spent outside of Spec working on Spec, writing and editing and reporting and budgeting and going to games.

Somewhere in those hours, you need to find room for work. And your friends. And sleep. That last one can be particularly tough when you’re at the office until 4 a.m. on a Thursday night and have to get up for work on Friday at 8:30. More than one reading assignment or lecture or section has been lost to Spec. While professors lectured and TAs led discussions, I sat on my laptop and pecked away at my next byline, be it a 1,600-word feature on Tommy John surgery or a 350-word preview of a nonconference lacrosse match (and there is a surprisingly large number of those).

I showed up for the Spec open house as a freshman still drunk from the night before. When the interest sheet went around, I signed up for the two sections that I was most interested in joining: Arts & Entertainment and Sports. With A&E, I had delusions of grandeur, like being asked to interview Thom Yorke or getting free tickets to any movie I wanted. With Sports, I had the promise from the then-editor, Anand Krishnamurthy, that if I joined I would be given a byline in a week and free beer.

Sports won out in the end.

I didn’t know where Spec would take me. When they asked for new writers to apply to be associates, I did because it just seemed to make sense. When they asked for associates to apply to be Sports editor, I did because it was just the logical progression for me. And when my time as Sports editor finished, I applied to be managing editor of the newspaper because that was the last highest position I could take. So when they rejected my bid, I sat down and wondered to myself why I kept giving time to an organization that hadn’t provided me anything concrete, save my name in print and a severely mangled sleep cycle.

I took the rest of my junior year and the first part of senior year off from Spec. I turned in columns when asked, but I barely if ever wrote. I stayed away from the office, tried to get my grades in order, even tried to adopt normal sleeping hours. But I came back in my last semester because, during those two semesters away from Spec, I felt lost. So I came back and helped run the section. I started writing again, turning in bylines like crazy. I felt like I’d rediscovered some part of myself that I’d tried to bury.

People—mostly my parents—asked me why I worked as much as I did with Spec. Spec doesn’t pay you. Your articles will be printed but read by a student body that’s mostly apathetic to athletics, by administrators, players, and coaches who can find no good in what you write, and by parents and alumni who rail against the administrators and coaches who they believe are the root of the problem. The Sports section of Spec sometimes feels like a giant Little League newsletter. Frank Zappa once said that rock journalism was people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read. Spectator Sports isn’t very far from that path.

But despite all the losses and truculent coaches and moronic administrators and long hours, I really, genuinely, truly enjoyed it. I enjoyed being at Spec no matter how late it got or how much I hated writing about field hockey, a sport that has rules and terms far too complicated for something as simple as hitting a ball with curved sticks. For as much as I complained and moaned to all in earshot about how much I couldn’t stand being in that office, I can’t help but feel all warm and fuzzy when I think about my time on the third floor of 2875 Broadway.

In my last column, I wrote that, no matter how many losses this school produces, the wins will always stick with me. The same is true of Spec. No matter how many times K4 crashed or how many lame headlines I wrote (“‘Consistency key for Lions’ ... done.”), I still loved being in that office.

Spec wasn’t just the articles and the layout. We played hockey and baseball and occasionally soccer with a ball of tape while waiting for printouts. We ate pudding with scissors while the copy staff looked on in horror. We ogled Shannon Munoz shamelessly. We stole the American flag from the former Eye office and nailed it up to the wall in our office along with a dozen other quotes and printouts, including my favorite, the long departed “SportsKartik” page. We had Shiney build a boat and “fuck youse guys” and Reuter Sauce and the Spec Sports “Vicotry!” edition and a thousand other idiotic inside jokes that no one cares about but that I’ll smile about when I’m doddering around as an old man.

We’ve made mistakes. We’ve run photos upside down or twice or of the wrong person. We’ve mis-attributed quotes, run incorrect scores, and said that lacrosse has had only one coach in its program’s history when, in reality, there have been two coaches who have contributed so wonderfully to that sport’s total failure here. We ran the names of recruits when we weren’t supposed to, we didn’t get quotes in every article, we couldn’t send a writer to every home game, we couldn’t even get a regular beat writer for field hockey or wrestling or lacrosse.

But no matter what, I will never stop defending my section or this paper. The way I see it, the only way you would agree to give up those hours and classes and everything else is because you really care about sports here. And we do. We want to watch these teams win and celebrate, if only because it’s much more fun to write about teams that are good than of teams that are terrible.

I’ve written over 100 stories for Spec, but I somehow never thought I would write this one. I’d give anything for 100 more.

*

It would take more words than Spec allows for me to thank everyone who has been a part of my four years here. But I’ll try to make do with what I have.

Theo Orsher built this section from the ground up. I never got to work with Theo while he was Sports editor, but he’s always been one of the most affable people I’ve known here at Columbia. Without Theo, there is no Spectator Sports.

Anand Krishnamurthy is the reason you’re reading this. He brought me on board, gave me open stories even though I’d never written a single newspaper article before, taught me everything he knew about the Ivy League and journalism and then some. Andy Krishna is one of the most creative people I know and someone who is always pushing you to do more and do better. He’s been the model for me as Sports editor, and I can only hope that I’ve been able to match up to the lofty standards he set for the entire section.

Jon Kamran was a good editor and a good man. He was one of us. He was a man who loved the Dodgers ... and baseball, and as an editor he ripped apart terrible club sports features and calculated VORP for Columbia’s starting pitchers and made me rewrite headlines and captions so that they didn’t suck. He left New York, like so many young men of his generation, before his time. In your wisdom, Lord, you took him to the West Coast, as you took so many bright flowering young men from 1020, the Heights, and Lions Head. These young men left this city. And so did Jon. Jon, who loved the Dodgers. And so, Jonathan Avraham Kamran, in accordance with what I think you would have wanted this section to be, I’ll just say that New York’s not the same without you.

I’ve got six words for Josh Robinson: he’s the best writer and the best editor that I’ve ever known. If you look at the New York Times’ Sports section, you won’t be able to go more than a page without seeing his name. He’s doing for the Times what he did for Spec day in and day out: raising the bar and improving the quality with every article he writes. And every article I’ve ever written has been measured in my mind against his best work. Josh taught me to go wide, flash it up high, weave it in, and Spec the fuck out of every article that I’ve bylined. He’s been with me from McSorley’s to Las Vegas and everywhere in between. I couldn’t have asked for a better friend.

Charles Young is the most underrated person on Spec. You could always count on him to take a story, help edit, come up with a feature idea, design a graphic, and anything else. And I could always count on him for, without a doubt, the best shoutouts in PixBox each and every week. Charles is, has, and always will be straight gangsta.

I spent every Sunday night my first semester sophomore year with Max Puro as an associate. We edited stories, each person trying to get the other to read field hockey or volleyball. We wrote headlines that Josh and Jon made us change every time. We managed to convince a writer to come in and do box scores for Puro by telling our staff that he was retarded, and I’m pretty sure that the girl who did the box scores (and did them terribly) fully believed us. We played basketball while in chairs and stalked Jon August’s drunken hookup on Facebook (which we’ve both refrained from sharing here). We became friends and stayed friends. And it goes without saying that those were some of the most fun nights that I’ve had here.

Jonathan Garrett August.

We’ve turned you into multiple house ads. We’ve obliterated you in shoutout after shoutout after shoutout in PixBox. We’ve told you about the swallow flying at night and the red fox hunting at dawn about 300 times. We’ve brought up the blue hat and the Puma ballet shoes and wearing flip-flops to play soccer. We’ve given you more shit than should really be humanly possible. But no matter what, I’ll always be grateful that you were Sports editor with me and that you’ve been my friend from the start. One last time: Fuck you, Auggie Doggie. You’re the best.

There are still countless more people I want to thank. There are all the production folks—Andrew Scheineson, Andrew Pramberger, and Ben Cotton—who made the page look beautiful day in and day out. There are the photographers—especially Will Davis and the delightful Laurene Aigrain—who dutifully covered games in even the worst of conditions and produced some jaw-dropping shots. There are the copy editors—Amy Shaw, Bob Ast, Darya Deker, and Lucy Hunter—who had to read all the drivel we’ve published.

Then there are the staff writers and associates whom I’ve had the utmost pleasure of knowing and working with. Matt Velazquez shouldered an almost impossible load as Sports editor. Holly MacDonald, Lisa Lewis, Jacob Shapiro, Lucas Shaw, and Sonya Chandra went above and beyond the call of duty. The associates whom I’ve worked with this semester—Michele Cleary, Bart Lopez, Jacob Levenfeld, Michael Shapiro, Kunal Gupta, and Sara Salzbank—kept the paper going under tremendously tough circumstances. I have no doubt that this section will continue to be the best in the paper with talented and dedicated kids like those at the helm.

Finally, I want to thank my friends. In four years here, these are the people whom I drunkenly sang along to the Clash and Pavement with, went to concerts with, watched Jeopardy! with, who listened to my ranting and offensive jokes and laughed instead of backing away. And a special thanks to two people—LK and Double L—who have been more important to me than anything or anyone else in the world. Thanks to all of you for being there.

Like the Good Doctor said, this is the point where the weird turn pro. And as S.M. so eloquently put it, everything’s ending here.

Go Sox.

Jonathan Tayler is a Columbia College senior majoring in history. sports@columbiaspectator.com