Kelsey Tehan’s big moment came with just seconds to go in overtime. The Kansas City Chiefs were in the red zone, and while quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ fingers were poised to receive the snap, Tehan’s were poised over her keyboard in the press box, ready to hit “post” on a raft of social media content she had created. Seconds later, wide receiver Mecole Hardman caught the touchdown pass that ended the game.
“I remember I looked at my coworker next to me and shouted, ‘Oh my God, we just won the Super Bowl,’” recalls Tehan (’22), who has served as social media coordinator for the NFL’s reigning champions for more than a year now. “And then I’m just hitting send on everything. We got as much stuff out as we possibly could, and I’m seeing all the numbers, millions of likes, millions of views, and I’m thinking it’s insane — I’m part of this.”
Like an increasing number of recent students, Tehan graduated from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication with a sports communication certificate added on. Douglas McLeod (’83), the Evjue Centennial Professor for the J-School, came up with the idea five years ago to meet an overwhelming student demand for training in sports communication, and teaching faculty member Matt Hermann came aboard to implement the summer program starting in 2019. Five years in, between 300-400 students are pursuing the certificate, and the program has experienced an annual growth of 50-75% since it launched. It’s currently the third-fastest growing certificate among students at UW.
“There’s so much enthusiasm around sports,” says Hermann. “And there’s a big interest in carrying all those skills toward sports and a sort of entrepreneurial spirit about how to communicate around sports.”
Even before the advent of the certificate, UW–Madison enjoyed massive representation in the sports and sports media industry. Graduates from the College of Letters & Science occupy important communication-related roles on Wisconsin’s professional teams (such as the Milwaukee Bucks and Brewers), major sports media companies (think ESPN and the NFL Network) and top-tier journalism outlets (including The Wall Street Journal). There’s something about the opportunities available in the J-School and around campus that set students up for success in the field.
Sherree Burruss (’12) certainly felt it when she was an undergrad in the J-School. Burruss, who works as a news reporter for NFL Network’s “Good Morning Football,” made her way onto the national sports journalism scene by gaining experience at a local news station in Chicago. Her first experience behind a news desk was as a kid on a school field trip at the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago, but she really learned the ropes at UW–Madison.
“Doing the practice newscasts in my classes, literally sitting and reading a prompter, that’s actually what I do in my day job,” says Burruss. “I think that exact experience definitely translated. But networking also is great. Wisconsin fans are such smart, engaged, invested sports fans, and I try to take that enthusiasm with me when I’m reporting on the sideline.”
Like Burruss, Evan Cohen (’02) started early and never stopped: He was 9 years old when he decided he wanted a career in radio broadcasting.
That early determination is one of many things that has helped Cohen, a communication arts graduate, make it to where he is today. He’s the anchor leg of the triad of co-hosts on “Unsportsmanlike,” ESPN Radio’s national morning radio program, and the vice president of content for the national broadcast group Good Karma Brands. Growing up in New York, a teenaged Cohen locked into radio titans like Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, Dan Patrick and Howard Stern. He also frequently shouts out his love for UW–Madison and the Badgers on “Unsportsmanlike.”
“I think a lot of people see what a lot of us do in sports media and say, ‘I love sports. I’d love to do what you do,’” says Cohen. “And my follow-up is always, ‘That’s great, but do you love radio?’ Because that’s the answer. It’s not about loving sports — it’s about loving radio.”
Cohen loved it so much he took every opportunity to hone his craft during his four years in Madison, spending countless hours prepping and broadcasting for WSUM, which was then located above Urban Outfitters on State Street.
“We knew nobody was listening,” he recalls. “But it was serious for us because I knew this was what I wanted to do. In my head, I only had one shot, and UW–Madison gave me a million opportunities to have that one shot because I would show up every day.”
Jason Gay (’92), the sports columnist for The Wall Street Journal since 2009, graduated from UW–Madison with a degree in history. He returns to campus frequently, including twice in 2019, serving as the speaker for that year’s winter commencement ceremony and for the annual gridiron tilt between the Badgers and the Michigan Wolverines. This gave him the perfect opportunity to do one of his favorite things as a sports journalist — clown then-Wolverines coach Jim Harbaugh.
Even though he’s plying his craft in a print medium that’s faced major headwinds in recent decades, Gay, whose byline has appeared in everything from GQ to Rolling Stone, still encourages students to pursue his journalistic path.
“If I can be anything, I’d like to be a rigorous optimist,” he says. “There will always be a substantial audience for quality storytelling — especially around a lively topic like sports.”
Bucking a Trend
The Milwaukee Bucks are in good hands. Good, Badger-trained hands.
Two members of the Bucks’ executive leadership team are graduates of the J-School: Arvind Gopalratnam (’04), the team’s vice president of corporate responsibility and executive director of the Milwaukee Bucks Foundation, and Barry Baum (‘92), the chief communications officer for the Bucks and Fiserv Forum, the arena where the team plays.
As an undergrad, Gopalratnam covered sports for The Daily Cardinal before developing a career in corporate and sports communication. Today, he commutes to Madison regularly to teach a school-year course on sports marketing communication and has also taught several courses in the sports certificate program.
“I am living and breathing in real life what this experience and kind of background do, but now I get to teach too,” he says. “One of my favorite things is to expose students to the breadth of opportunities in the world of sports that a skill set in communications can set you up for. It’s not necessarily that if you get this degree, it equals this job.”
Baum can certainly relate. The Brooklyn native — also a Daily Cardinal alum — hustled to parlay his journalism degree into a nearly seven-year stint as a sportswriter for the New York Post. After covering the National Hockey League’s New York Islanders for a couple of years, he jumped to the other side, eventually doing public relations and business communications for the New Jersey / Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center before being lured to the Midwest by an old friend who grew up with him in Brooklyn, Bucks President Peter Feigin.
“Communications turned out to be a great opportunity to use the skills I learned at Wisconsin, from telling a story to learning how to write succinctly and creatively,” says Baum. “It led to where I am today. I am so appreciative of that.”