10:22am. I'm blogging already. Is that good timing? I woke up at 8:30, but fell asleep again and got up just before 9:30. So far, I've washed up, washed my dishes from last night, heated up some breakfast, checked my fantasy football leagues, and now I'm blogging.

Things I need to do today:
1) prepare for the JobNob event on Thurs
2) work on my websites
3) send out some job apps
4) do some more writing
5) exercise

I've been thinking about what I love. As an adult, I'm more aware of my true interests, yet the older I get the less professional these things feel.

1) I'm a hard core sports fan. I love to keep up with the 3 major sports: football, basketball, and baseball. I spend countless hours playing fantasy leagues, every year. I never get tired of sports. I also like tennis and snowboarding, and I have a new appreciation for golf.  I will continue to play sports until my legs cannot hold me up or my arms cannot bend.

Career-wise, I think it would be hard to find a job in the sports world. Broadcasting, of course, would be tough as most stations are cutting back on staff. News is a major cost center rather than a revenue center. And in this economy, we're seeing news stations cut back. Places like KRON now force their reporters to shoot as a one-man-band. 

As for print, the once untouchable Sports Illustrated looks more like a pamphlet than it does a magazine. Other than the swim suit issue, very few of the issues are worth buying. As print advertising budgets shrink, SI is printing fewer and fewer pages. Overall, their efforts have gone online. I think both print and broadcasting industries are bowing down to the Internet. Advertising dollars are going toward the web because it's easier to measure results on the web than it is to measure advertising in the broadcast and print industries. Also, websites are cheaper to run than print or broadcast operations, so CEOs are starting to reconsider sinking more money into traditional media. Given that advertising budgets have shrunk in general, the strength of the internet has weakened the income of print and broadcasting.

Sports Information Departments: College. I've had my stints at both the Stanford and SFSU SIDs. Although the Stanford athletic department runs a high-class sophisticated operation, the pay scale is very low. While I was there, the junior SIDs told me that salaries are low, and people do it because they love Stanford sports. In fact he said that $65,000 would be a high salary for an SID. What? That sucks!

As for professional sports, I've heard similar rants about the pay scales. People do it because they love the team. Jed once told me he would not take any offers from neither the Trailblazers nor Mavericks because they don't pay well enough for him to quit his day job. That sucks! The pro teams pay exorbitant millions to the athletes, but piddly squat to the supporting staff.  (But I must say that the sports teams are more accurate than corporate America in their way of paying top producers... more later). The truth is that fans come to see the athletes play the sport, not to see administrative people sit behind a desk and do administrative things. So the money goes where the money comes from.

So what could I do in the sports industry?