By Brendan O’Meara
Seth Wickersham (@seth.wickersham on IG) didn’t always want to be a sports writer, but he found his way to it by being a high school quarterback, covering the University of Missouri Tigers, and “crashing the party” at the Super Bowl with fellow writers Wright Thompson and Justin Heckert.
This episode was a chance to revisit his amazing story on its ten-year anniversary, “Awakening the Giant,” about Y.A. Tittle. Seth also is the author of It’s Better to be Feared about the New England Patriots dynasty, a book twenty years in the making. He’s a senior writer for ESPN.com and often collaborates with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Don Van Natta Jr. — he of The Sunday Long Read — on deeply reported pieces on the NFL.
Seth shares a lot of stories about his twenty-plus-year career reporting on some of the most powerful people in sports. The best advice he offered (among the wealth of stuff) is: get them out of the building. Meaning, get your sources to a neutral site, out of the confines of their bunkers. Plus, it gets them moving and narrative stories need propulsion.
This conversation ticked (sp?) all the boxes for me. Seth’s career path and Wright’s (who I haven’t had on the pod yet) are how I wish mine went, especially Wright’s … but, you know, you gotta have talent, rigor, grit, ambition, focus, vision … things I lack. I’m something of a slacker … OK … we’re getting off topic here … This isn’t about me, it’s about Seth!
He’s such a great guy and a generous person in this community of nonfiction weirdos. Please enjoy.
