The Game is Only Part of the Story for Mike Waters

                             


For Mike Waters of the Post Standard, sports writing was never really the job he had dreamed of doing when he was a kid. "I don't know if I ever 'decided' this is what I was going to do for a career, its just what I did and I kept doing it and had fun with it" Waters said. Growing up an avid sports fan, Waters enjoyed everything from basketball and football to wrestling and swimming. He started writing stories for sports in high school for his school paper and has not stopped since.

Having worked at the Syracuse Post Standard for over 20 years Waters, a native of Tennessee and UNC alum,  has become a part of the community. He even takes pride in his occasional showdowns with Jim Boeheim, notorious for being 'prickly' with the media. "If he and I don't have a really good, nose to nose argument a year I'm not doing my job" he said with a grin.

One of his most memorable experiences was covering the 2009 Syracuse-UConn 6 overtime game in the Big East Tournament. He watched one of the most epic college basketball games of all time played on the grandest stage in the Garden. He remembers the game a little differently then most fans though. The near finishes and buzzer beaters and clutch plays were thrilling, but Waters was waging his own battle as he raced to get in a story before deadline.  

Waters has seen almost everything during his time covering Syracuse hoops. Big East titles, NCAA infractions, a National Title. What seems to interest him the most though are the stories behind the games. The players involved, or the surrounding circumstances. Story telling and real journalism. Maybe that's why he never dreamed of being just a sports writer.

Donato DiRenzo: The following is an excerpt from my interview with Mike Waters of the Post Standard. For the entire 45 minute interview check out my Twitter @DonatoDiRenzoII

DD: Can you maybe tell me one or a couple, memorable or special, anything that really sticks out like kind of a cool moment in your career?

Mike Waters: The six overtime game is a game that always sticks out to me and not just because it was a great cool game the same way SU fans remember it. I don’t remember it exactly the same way. I mean first of all I’m a reporter everything’s based on history and uniqueness. That games incredibly unique.

I love the six overtime game for all the little things that happened there ya know that Kris Joseph not playing at all until the overtimes and then when he did go in he played center and he was going up against Hasheem Thabeet. And this was Kris Joseph before he was really Kris Joseph he was only I think a Freshman that year.. Yeah he was a freshman that year so here he was as a freshman 6’7” he’s going up against 7’2” Hasheem Thabeet. You know the fact that it almost never happened because of Devendorf’s shot at the end of regulation, if it had been a split second sooner we all go home. But from a journalistic perspective what I really liked about that night is a couple things. It showed where both the paper was still important and yet social media and the website could enhance how we covered an event.

I was there with Donna Ditota and Bud Poliquin, neither one of them got a story in the paper. I barely made the paper. That game ended at like 1:22 or 1:24 in the morning and basically from the end of regulation through every single overtime I’m writing running. I’m erasing leads, deleting leads pushing them down and rewriting stuff, at the end of every single regulation things would change. Andy Rautins would hit a three to send it to the fourth overtime and stuff so I’m constantly rewriting half the time I’m not even looking up. Donna is telling me play-by-play as I’m still writing because she’s sitting next to me and basically it was like near the end of the fourth or fifth overtime, were constantly on the phone with the editors back here and finally they said ‘1:30 is the drop dead’ were not gunna get it in the paper, were just gunna have to send us what you got and we’ll run it with a little note saying the game did not end or it was tied at the end of four overtimes or it was tied at the end of five or tied at the end of six. Whatever’s the last thing we can get in 1:30 the drop dead. And then of course Syracuse takes over in that sixth overtime giving me a little bit more time to craft a story. I use the term craft loosely because you’re not crafting much because you’re still on this tremendous deadline.

But because they did open up an eight or ten point lead I’m able to write a little bit and we got a story out. We got a story with the final score and everything in there. And the Hartford Current didn’t and it was kind of like our little win that night too. The Syracuse Post Standard got the story in and got it out to our readers and most other papers did not. But then what happened is me Donna and Bud we stuck around, we were at the Garden until 3:30 4:00 in the morning because we were still able to go to the locker room, go to the post-game press conference, get quotes write stories and post them to our website.

So there were people waking up at maybe 6 in the morning the next day that maybe didn’t stay up for the whole game, or even those that did maybe woke up at like ten in the morning, but they were able to go to Syracuse.com and they got a better written game story from me with quotes they got Donna’s sidebar, they had Bud’s Column. We had notes that Donna and I had combined on. I mean everything that you would have normally seen in the paper with a regular game at 7 o’clock start you still had it all online. And people really went online that day.

And then what we did was throughout that day, because Thursday night was the quarterfinals so when they won that game the next nights the semi’s they weren’t going to play again until Friday night at 7 or 9 o’clock. So we had all day and because of the intense interest in the game, we kept feeding them stuff to our website. Calling people getting their opinions ‘what’d you see about the game’ you know stuff like that. Calling former players, calling analysts. Me and a photographer sat down and we went through like the five key moments of the game with his photos and me writing extended captions and we put that up late in the day. It ran in the paper too, but it went on the website first. That was new, so it was really kind of an interesting marriage or cross section of how the paper was still important enough to us that we really busted our butts to get something into the paper and there’s something, there’s a thrill to writing on deadline.

That was cool. To get something to all those readers that were going to subscribe to the paper or pick it up on their way in to work. But then there was something that was really eye opening about how we were able to use the website that night. So that was a cool game. Not just from the fact that it was a great game and all this stuff, also it was a really cool game in terms of journalism.

DD: Syracuse, like any other program, has had its black eyes in the past. Devendorf, Billy Edelin, Deshaun Williams, names like that. How do you cover when they’re not the most easy to cover kind of topics?

MW: Yeah those are sort of the stories that you don’t always think of when you first sign up for this gig. But their important. If it involves a player obviously its important story because it might involve if the player will be on the court on Saturday.

Going back to Michael Carter-Williams last December busted for shoplifting. Although they never wanted to use that word because they were able to, they tried to sneak it past us. They hamhanded it The University really screwed up on that they let Mike talk without talking to him and when he tried to say it was a misunderstanding, well some people out at the mall weren’t really happy with that label they were like ‘wait a second misunderstanding that could make it sound like we profiled him or that he didn’t shoplift.’ Now all of a sudden because of him just using that poorly thought out phrase, I had a good story at the end of that week where I had two sources from the mall, sort of from the mall say, no yeah he shoplifted, got it on camera saw him go in exactly what he took you know stuff like that.

But that story was important because was he going to get suspended, was he arrested by the city police or not. It was just overall another black eye for the program and those stories are good, it shows you’re not just a sports writer covering fun and games. If you are going to get into this you gotta be prepared to be a news reporter, and all that news surrounding your beat is important.