Gary Langfield 
I recently had the opportunity to listen to Michael Wilbon speak at the Obama Foundation about being in sports media. He spoke of the type of skills young Black men should have going into the industry — the two most important being reading and writing.
For those who don’t know, Wilbon is a sports analyst for ESPN and a writer for the Washington Post. When talking about the skills of reading and writing he said, “We’re not literate people anymore, we’re semi-literate.”
Wilborn talked about how you have to master reading and writing to then be able to craft stories in different mediums. If you can read and write at a high level, then you’re able to bend the rules and tell satisfying stories.
The St. Ignatius College Prep alumnus preached about the vital role of education saying, “We’re the only people on earth that will try to convince each other that education is an impediment to success, it isn’t it facilitates success.”
He was referring to the people in our community who don’t value a college education. His point was that college is more than crucial when it comes to skills such as reading and writing.
Being from the South Side, Wilbon was asked how to stay out of trouble and keep your head up. He told stories about how back in the day if people saw you were cut for something greater, they would make sure you weren’t in places you had no business in.
He talked about the value of a mentor after saying that he runs into a lot of young people who think they know everything. To put it simply, he said, “If you’re not being mentored or you’re not mentoring someone else you’re missing out.”
I’m very fascinated with the idea of being able to cover sports like Wilbon does, so I asked him what his day-to-day routine looked like. He said, “The routine starts at night, pay attention to what’s going on. All of it.” He emphasized how he watched and covered everything as opposed to just one sport.
After you watch everything and get a good gist of it, you can then decide what you’re gonna write or talk about in the morning depending on what your medium is. Wilbon, a graduate of Northwestern, made it clear that in this field a big chunk of your work is done at night simply because no sporting event has stuff going on in the morning.
It was a pleasure to watch and listen to Micheal Wilbon speak to us in person about being in the sports media world. We had fun debates like who was better MJ or LeBron, but this discussion gave great insight into what life is like as a sports writer and analyst, giving us all lots to think about.
By Gary Langfield Jr.
Instagram: @ima_menace21
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