Terence Moore (BA Economics, Miami, 1978) [national sports journalist for CNN, ESPN, the NFL Network, MLB.com, and more]: When I had this vision of being a sports journalist, it was right in the middle of Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein, The Washington Post, 1974, everybody wanted to be a journalist. So the advice I got in high school, which was great advice, is go to a school where you can write an awful lot, a college, rather, and then major in something else because it's all about whether you can write or not. And then take some journalism courses on the side, and just get good. And that's what I did.

So when I came here, Miami has always been good with the business field, started out with finance, didn't like that so much, economics, that was me, it was fun, I liked the graphs, and the curves, and the micro, and the macro. So I was able to do that, work for the The Miami Student newspaper, make connections on the side, and it worked out very well, The Cincinnati Enquirer hires me as an intern, they like what I did, and next thing you know, I have a full-time job offer from The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Milwaukee Journal, and The Washington Post.

I've covered so much, I've covered literally half of the Super Bowls that have ever been, that's ever happened, put it that way. The Indianapolis 500, Winter Olympics, Summer Olympics, major boxing matches, Final Fours, and I've covered so many, it's just hard to pick one that I like the most. Which is why I think I was meant to be a sports columnist, because as a sports columnist, you get a chance to do a variety of things. So whatever the season it is, that's my favorite season. Whatever the sport is, that's my favorite sport at that particular time.

One of the things that helped me with being a professional journalist was starting out here at Miami University working for the Miami Student. Back during that time, The Miami Student allowed you to write a lot. And the way you get good as a writer is to write, so I wrote a lot. The other thing that helped me back then was, I was here at Miami in the '70s, and those were the glory days of Miami athletics. The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Cincinnati Post, The Dayton Daily News, The Columbus Dispatch, they all had regular writers that would come to Oxford to cover those teams. And then you had the national media. Sports Illustrated would come here, The New York Times would come here.

So, I took advantage of those. When they would come, I would show them my clips, my stories that I did for The Miami Student and ask, "Hey, could you help me out and tell me how I can get better?" Or I would ask them "Can I just talk to you about writing?", or what have you. And most of these veteran reporters were so impressed by this; they would take time to do it. Some probably said, "What is this guy talking about?" But most took the time to do it. And I was making contact at the same time.

The one thing about liberal arts education for anybody is great, but I will just speak for myself. One thing about being a sports journalist: the key word isn't 'sports', the key word is 'journalist'. You're a journalist, and to be an effective journalist, you have to be all-inclusive, all knowing—you almost have to be omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, sort of way, in kind of a smaller sense. You have to be all these things because you never know when you're going to be able to use any of those disciplines.

And being here in the liberal arts at Miami helped me in so many ways. Since being a 'sports journalist', I've covered things such as Pete Rose, who is the greatest hitter of all time, all time in history. Who would think you would be covering Pete Rose in a gambling scandal? So you have to know a little bit about that, if not a lot about that. In Atlanta, we had a football player named Michael Vick, quarterback, prolific quarterback. Then, all of a sudden, he's involved in dog fighting and dog killing. So, now, all of a sudden, I have to spend a year doing that, going into courtrooms in Richmond, Virginia. That has nothing to do with sports. But I have to cover that. You have situations like Ray Carruth, who was a star wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers, murdering his pregnant girlfriend. So, you have to be knowledgeable of a bunch of other things.

This is a school that makes you be well-rounded, where you can be able to react to any situation.

[March 2014]