Have you ever wanted to pull a Chris Snow?

Two from the Globe and Mail in Toronto:

Tim Wharnsby left the Toronto Sun to work for the NHL Players Association. He wasn't gone long and is now assistant sports editor at the G&M.

The sports editor, Steve McAllister, went from the Canadian Press to Tennis Canada, to the NHLPA, back to Tennis Canada and then to his current position.

 

If Bill Bavasi can hold on to a gig, surely you can.

 

Didn't the former PR director for the Montreal Expos -- the one I always saw quoted -- become a baseball writer for one of the Toronto papers?

 

Yes, Richard Griffin wrote really funny game notes and press releases for the Montreal Expos (they called the releases "communiques"), so funny the writers would always use his best lines, so the Toronto Star cut out the middle man and hired him as a baseball columnist.

Ken Gurnick used to cover the Dodgers for the late LA Herald-Examiner and the National, then went to work as the P.R. guy for Dennis Gilbert, the Scott Boras of that time. Gurnick's back on our side now, covering the Dodgers for mlb.com.

 

And now he's the chairman of the BBWAA's Toronto chapter.

 

Absolutely, and believe me, if I could "pull" what Chris Snow did, I'm sure I already would have.

 

Who among us doesn't believe we could do a better job than Danny Ainge?
He's a complete foof.
The man traded for Sebastian Telfair and Ricky Davis and drafted Rajon Rondo. He couldn't know less about basketball if he'd grown up in Kazahkstan.

 

Isn't the GM of the Carolina Panthers a former sports writer?

 

i think it's somewhat common for newspaper writers to go into PR. but what snow did was far different. he joins a select few - as posted above - like accorsi, hurney et al to actually move into management and player evaluation. everyone who has been a sports writer could do the job of PR guy or SID.

but whether you can move into management is a different question. and who knows, but it wouldn't surprise me if 5 years from now chris snow is the 31-year-old wunderkind GM of an NHL team.

me, as a former sports writer and future attorney, i'd work in the general counsel's office of a team, league or union in a heartbeat. not surprisingly those jobs are even harder to come by than top sportswriting jobs.

i have an old college classmate (we were both on the baseball team...he went right to law school after college and i waited nine years) who last year was named general counsel of an MLB team and he's basically living his dream -- well, the alternate dream to anyone who has ever played a sport and realized early on he won't play it professionally. i asked him if he'd hire me as his deputy when i graduate and he said no.

 

The current sports editor in Vegas started as a writer at the paper, went to UNLV as an asst. SID, then later came back to the paper as a columnist. So there's another precedent out there ...

 

Not sure if its just urban legend or not, but I heard when the St. Louis Blues were looking for their first GM in 1967, Red Fisher, the great Montreal Canadiens beat writer, was a finalist. Believe the job went to Lynn Patrick, who hired Scotty Bowman as an assistant coach, handed him the reins midway through the season -- and a legend was created.

 

Chris Snow has the title of Director of Hockey Operations which is a pretty vague term. It can mean he literally runs the whole front office and the scouting staff or it can mean he's basically Risebrough 's assistant--it's probably somewhere in between but our pal Jones could probably fill in the blanks.

You gotta hand it to Riseborough. Hockey is pretty much an old boys club so it was a pretty ballsy hire.