A friend of mine recently asked me how many stories I have written for this newspaper in the past four years. Fair question, I figured, so I counted.

The answer is almost 300.  It’s a frightening number, really. I did some quick math and realized it probably adds up to about two weeks of my college career hunched over a laptop in a dark room someplace when I could have been doing … just about anything else. (Talie, if you’re reading this, thanks again for putting up with me.)

Also frightening is that out of all of those articles, this one was probably the toughest to write. I have been dreading it since the day I became a sports columnist back in January.
Writing about myself feels uncomfortable and unnatural. As journalists, we are trained to tell other people’s stories, and I think we’re pretty good at it most of the time.

Rarely do we tell our own.

As I sat down to write last weekend, I wondered what I wanted to share. How much personal information was I willing to give? What do I want the world to know about me? What secrets do I want to protect?

Maybe I’m being naïve to think it matters. That implies people are actually reading the words underneath my picture in the paper every week.

This internal doubt forced me to consider the nature of this profession in a way I rarely have before. The athletes and coaches I have covered for the past four years did not have the opportunity to review what I wrote about them. They didn’t get to decide what was too personal. I made that judgment with the help of my fantastic editors through the years, based on my reporting and our collective news sense.

That’s why I want to use the rest of this space to thank the athletes, the coaches, the support staff — everybody who has taken time out of their incredibly busy days to speak with me. Without them, my job would not exist.

I know it wasn’t always easy for them. Or fun. But for four years, they let me peer into their lives in a way few students on this campus ever get to. For that, I am grateful.

Let’s be realistic. I am an insignificant college student with a notebook and tape recorder, at least for another few days. Media from around the country come here to tell the same stories I strive to tell. The key difference is that their reach and influence at outlets like ESPN or The New York Times extend far wider than mine at The Daily Orange.

And yet, gentlemen like Jim Boeheim, Doug Marrone and John Desko never treated me like I was insignificant. They gave me the time of day when they didn’t have to.
Boeheim, whose reputation with the media is dicey at best, returned my telephone call every time I wanted to speak with him. He didn’t always want to talk to me, but he called and answered my silly questions.

Two weeks ago, Desko devoted a full hour to speak with me in his office, right in the middle of the season. He could have been watching film or drawing up strategy. But no. For that hour, I felt like his top priority.

Just yesterday I called Marrone because he wanted to put me in contact with a journalist friend of his who covers the Washington Redskins. That is what makes this job worthwhile — getting to know special people who you come to care about for reasons other than their athletic talent.

Sports writers are so wrapped up in tracking down ‘sources’ that it’s easy to forget these people are just that — people. Think about that word, ‘sources.’ It objectifies them. It takes away their humanity. Maybe that makes it easier to grill them with personal questions.

It is common newsroom parlance, after conducting a key or coveted interview, to tell your colleagues that you ‘got him.’ I don’t quite know what that means, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want it to happen to me.

Almost all of the so-called ‘sources’ I have met here are wonderful human beings. They have personalities, senses of humor, fears and insecurities, just like everybody else.
You may view Boeheim as surly and cold. But I have seen him laugh and crack some of the funniest jokes you will hear, in his signature deadpan glory.

You probably view Greg Robinson as a clown. Sometimes he was. He is also a warm, kindhearted person who went through the process of publicly losing a job he adored, even if he wasn’t particularly good at it.

I say all this to stress my sincere gratitude and thanks to all of these people, and all the others from nearly every athletic team on campus. I hope I didn’t take your time and generosity for granted. I’m sorry if I did.

Greg Paulus, one of the kindest and funniest people I have gotten to know during my time here, tells me all the time that he never reads the paper. He doesn’t go online. He doesn’t watch ESPN. Whenever we meet, I end up sharing news about his team he didn’t know yet. I suspect a lot of athletes are the same way.

But if any of you are out there, taking the time to read this farewell, thank you again. I hope you know that I mean it. I hope I said it enough.

Jared Diamond wrote for The Daily Orange for four years. He served as sports editor, assistant sports editor and assistant copy editor. He covered football for two seasons, along with a season of men’s basketball. This was his final column after a semester as featured sports columnist. You can now reach him at [email protected].

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Published on May 3, 2010 at 12:00 pm