Could you be a good sports GM?

I do a pretty good job in video games as GM.

 

Lets see, General Manager Mike Brown of the Cincinnati Bengals. 18-years = one winning season and one playoff appearance. And I think I could figure out after twenty years of 'building through the draft' you should probably employ more than one scout.

 

I'll answer that later tonight or tomorrow morning - but I will answer it (though I've kind of tossed out some generalities regarding it already).

 

I don't want to crap on anyone's parade but I mean this seriously. The fact that you're a good sportswriter doesn't translate into being a successful GM. I mean, practically none.

I co-owned a bookstore for fourteen years and every day we would get, "Oh, I'd love to work in a bookstore. I read a lot".

It always made us laugh. Yeah, we just sit around reading books all day.

Most literary critics wouldn't have a clue how to run a bookstore any more than a food critic could successfully run a restaurant.

Edit: I'll make an exception in Waylon's case if he has a business and law degree. That's pretty impressive.

 

I don't think it's totally unreasonable, if you got the business and law background to go with the sports background. The people who have these jobs weren't born into them -- they came from somewhere.

I personally would be a terrible GM, because I would get too attached to players as people (or, alternately, decide I hated certain players) and wouldn't be able to make dispassionate decisions about them as widgets in a business.

 

That's right. Those who were are called owners.

 

I'd be better than Isiah Thomas and Matt Millen, but so would most cocker spaniels.

 

What's funny is as soon as I made my post, I remembered that the GM of the tem I cover pretty much has his job because of nepotism. Most don't, so my point stands, but it was kind of ironic.

 

It's times like those where I hate that my dad is a band director.

 

OK, here goes. And the LSAT terminology that has lodged itself into my brain even a year later compels me to let you know that I realize that none of these qualities are necessarily sufficient to do the job - I realize that. But I think they are necessary. And that's a start.

1. Ever since high school, really, and perhaps before then, I've been drawn in two directions - the leadership gene and the creative writing, I'll-never-be-a-middle-manager-I'm-above-that-garbage! gene. The older I get, the more I can objectively recognize that I have pretty good acumen for recognizing where a product needs to go and how to carry that out, within reason. Unfortunately, I haven't had the opportunity to act on a lot of those impulses, except through trying to influence other people. I have only pursued writing jobs, I'm buried on my shop's depth chart when it comes to the managerial pecking order and, really, the newspaper business has kind of ground to a standstill right now.

2. I'm pretty sure I have a business and law aptitude. I scored high on the LSAT - high enough to get into a top 10 school, which I'm sending the deposit in for soon and starting either this fall or next (may request a deferral). It's one of those schools that automatically gets your resume looked at. I'd imagine that I'll start pounding away for the GMAT this summer, take it in the fall, and hopefully score well enough to at least qualify for their business school, as well (also a top program).

I know that there are plenty of people who would say, "I don't need some fancy education - I went to the 'School of Hard Knocks. Branch Rickey didn't have to go to a fancy-schmancy school!' (I don't really know if he did or not)." But the truth is that you need every advantage you can get, credential-wise. It's the same reason the New York Times has more Columbia J-school grads working there than SUNY-Albany grads.

3. I know sports - but I'm also interested in the business machinery of sports, which is where me and Joe on a Car Phone kind of lose touch a little bit. I'm putting this third, because I realize it's what every Cashman wannabe and Johnny Saberblog in America would say. But I call it natural curiosity. Which isn't as common as you'd think - not to my degree. If I flip on a game and Nick Blackburn is pitching for the Minnesota Twins, I want to know, 1. What round was Nick Blackburn picked in? 2. What pitches does he throw? 3. How old is he? 4. What's his injury history? If I don't know everything about someone I'm watching, I get uncomfortable and even slightly bored.

It's a curiosity that has made me a pretty serviceable journalist, because I don't accept the surface answers that most athletes and other subjects like to give you, and that most people are satisfied with. And I think it would translate. I like diving into the details to grab hold of the big picture - computer-assisted reporting, for example.

4. I'm a competitive MF. It's wrong, for example, but I'm always extremely gratified to win journalism contests. It's not that this is what I do it for - but it's that when I'm up against other people in competition, I want to beat them. More than that, though, I want to beat myself. And I understand this is a bit of a character flaw, but I enjoy the outside validation. I thrive on it. A golf score. A 5K time. A head-to-head weekly fantasy win.

This last one is more why I would want to do the job and less why someone would want to hire me. I recognize that. I thought I'd toss it out there anyway, though.