Simon Shelton has a clear goal: to be a professional sports commentator, calling games as a play-by-play broadcaster and analyst. So when his mentor, Ed Hill, told him about Howard University’s annual sports media and management reception, the freshman showed up with a plan of his own.
“I want to go out and directly network with people,” said Shelton, a freshman broadcast journalism major from Dallas, Texas. “I can see that’s what everybody’s doing right now.”
Shelton was one of the many students, alumni and sports professionals who gathered Friday, Oct. 16, in Charles R. Drew Hall for the 12th Annual Sport Management & Sports Media Reception. The event connected students interested in broadcasting, journalism and sports operations with professionals working in the field.
Hill, who worked at The Washington Post before spending 33 years as Howard’s sports information director, started the reception after noticing a gap. Howard’s athletes were hard to miss at games, he said, but few Black professionals were working behind the scenes at the venues the teams visited.
“We had a great representation on the basketball court, on the football field,” Hill said. “We didn’t have people behind the scenes when we go to these various venues.”
At the predominantly white institutions Howard’s teams competed against, he said, few Black professionals were among those making decisions and running operations.
Running a one-person office covering 26 sports, Hill said he relied on students to staff games, and many of them went on to jobs in organizations including the NFL and the NBA. Those former students became the foundation of the reception, which Hill said has grown from about nine or 10 people in its early years to 70 or 75 today.
“Howard students are different,” Hill said. “They’re highly motivated. They don’t accept no. When they believe that they can do something, they go in there and they fight for it.”
Todd Morgan, a 1989 Howard graduate who worked at NBA Entertainment from 1990 to 2000, was at his third reception.
“I want to impart wisdom and knowledge to them because someone did it for me, and I need to do it for the next generation,” Morgan said.
Morgan, the first in his family to graduate from college, said breaking into sports in the late 1980s and early 1990s was difficult, with little representation in the field. Landing the NBA job “wasn’t just for me,” he said. “It was for the whole family.”
Teri Washington, an alumni and vice president of communications at Oak View Group, a venue development and management company, arrived at Howard planning to study fashion. Working in sports information changed her mind.
“I volunteered a lot,” she said. “I tried to meet anybody I could meet, just so people knew you.”
She credited Hill for keeping the community connected.
“He’s the glue for everybody, and it keeps us all connected,” she said.
The night also included the Jim Trotter sports scholarship. Trotter, its namesake and Howard alumnus, said it exists, “to help young aspiring sports journalists pursue their dreams.”
“When I was at Howard, I was fortunate enough to get financial help,” Trotter said. “And so this is a way of giving back.”
A selection committee chooses the most deserving applicant, he said, and looks for students “serious about the profession of sports journalism.” This year’s winner is Tanbrance Berry, a junior legal communications major from Atlanta.
Berry plans to attend law school next year and pursue sports law, driven by a desire to protect Black athletes from being exploited by large schools, teams and local agents. Until then, Berry said, sports journalism is the way to help.
Shelton, the freshman, said he once dreamed of playing in the NFL until his mother urged him to have a backup plan that kept him in the sports world. Now he wants to stay close to the game “without hurting my body and my brain.”
When asked what Howard offers students who want to enter the industry, Shelton did not hesitate.
“It’s networking,” he said. “This industry is about who you know.”
Copy edited by Daryl R. Thomas Jr.
