The most common question I've been asked when I tell people I am the sports editor of The Daily Tar Heel is some variation on, "So… what are you going to write about?" It's a good question, one we're still trying to figure out.
I don't have an exact number, but writing game stories was far and away where we got most of our content on sports desk. Trying to figure out how to replace all those field hockey, volleyball, soccer and cross country stories — now that the fall Olympic Sports season has been reduced, if it isn't outright moved or canceled later — has been difficult.
Getting creative has been the name of the game — obviously the athletes are still around and football looks like it's going to attempt to start its season in two weeks — but now has been the time for us to think about and cover athletics in a much larger sense. Already, we've started to direct our coverage into more of what I've been calling "reported news" stories: picking up the phone and calling people, just like our colleagues on the other DTH desks do, to talk about sports.
In a town like Chapel Hill, what UNC does has ripple effects everywhere, and that includes athletics. Already, we've spoken to local businesses about what the effects are going to be of not having the big game days for football on Saturdays. That's a great example of the reach athletics has: people want to go to a bar with their friends to watch a football game, order a drink and some food and hang out for awhile.
Now, when 500 or 1,000 people all want to do that at the same time, that's a lot of money these restaurants are making and, importantly, plan on making every year. Take that money away, and what happens? Linda's has already temporarily closed (be still, my aching heart), and a host of other restaurants shut their doors permanently.
That's going to be our primary focus this year, looking at what the ripples from the decisions made around athletics are going to be. That extends beyond just the D1 athletes at UNC. Students relied on club and intramural sports for exercise and a sense of community. How are they doing now that those groups can't practice anymore?
A line a lot of people have been parroting, myself included, since the pandemic is that there are a lot more important things to be focusing on than sports right now. To quote Sean Doolittle, pitcher for the Nationals: "Sports are like the reward of a functioning society." We're nowhere near a functioning society, but the reality is that sports are really important to a lot of people. Potentially losing them, or even having them in some reduced capacity, is going to have some very serious real world effects.
So how do we look for stories? We look for what's being changed and we try to figure out who is being affected by that. We're trying to think larger than just on-the-field exploits this year.
If you have a story idea you'd like us to look into, please contact us at sports@dailytarheel.com.
