Five Media Thoughts: OSU’s Sports Year Ends, on to 2018-19

It’s officially over. With OSU knocked out of postseason baseball and every other sport wrapped up for the summer, the Cowboys (and Cowgirls) have ended their 2017-18 sports year. It was a fun one to cover (and at times a great one to cover). Most of us are planning on stepping away at various points during the summer to recharge and get ready to roll again once soccer and football starts back at the beginning of August, but we still have a ton of fun stuff planned to get you through the next two months.

What I’m Excited About

I’m headed to the U.S. Open this week at Shinnecock. I wish Matthew Wolff or Viktor Hovland had qualified, but I’m pumped to cover Peter Uihlein, Charles Howell III and newly-engaged (not sure if that was made public or not) Rickie Fowler. Shinny is an all-time classic, and I always feel a lot of gratitude during major weeks (especially at places like that one) to do this for a living.

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A Media Thing I Think Know I Believe

Last week Mrs. Pistols and I hit the eight-year mark on our marriage. We celebrated with Thai food and beers (per the usual). I know it’s mildly trite to say that I would not be where I am without her, but I don’t mean that in the figurative sense. Literally, none of this would have happened if not for her graciousness and willingness to let me make so little money it’s a little staggering to look back on explore what I wanted to do for a living and how we wanted to live.

She has been understanding of 2 a.m. writing nights after late football games, understanding of coaching hires in the middle of dinner and understanding of the reality that in the world we live in, work can happen at any time and in any place (I once wrote 10 thoughts on a KU game from the Stillwater Best Buy because my laptop was locked inside a friend’s house).

Through it all she has not only been generous with her time and her desires but encouraging when I wanted to pack it up and quit. She has pushed me to hire people and to put myself out there and to stay the course, and nobody was more excited than her about the podcast we posted today with Mike Holder (NOT SURE IF ANYONE KNEW WE DID THAT PODCAST OR NOT).

She doesn’t care about recruiting rankings or skinny posts or uniforms (ok, she cares a little about uniforms), but we all get to chat about those things every single day because she cares about me, and I’m really glad for that.

I think a lot about dream chasing and work and work-life balance and all of the subcategories of those topics. Mrs. Pistols and I discuss them a lot and what we want the future (and present) to look like for our family. And I have told her privately what I would like to acknowledge publicly: I would probably still be working for an insurance company if I wasn’t married to her. I don’t know if that’s actually true, but I don’t know that it actually matters because it’s something I believe.

I love her for myriad reasons but her exhortation of me in this space is certainly near the top of the list.

Eight years ago the seed that would eventually sprout into this website and company was starting to take root as I was growing restless. We lived in an apartment spanning 600 square feet, and I couldn’t pick something I wanted to pursue outside of my day job. I’ll never forget her sitting me down one day and telling me, “Just pick something.” I did. And three Masters, three U.S. Opens, a Ryder Cup, many Bedlams AND A PODCAST WITH MIKE HOLDER later, it was probably the second best pick I’ve ever made.

What I’m Reading

I’m done with Today Will Be Different — good not great. You can see all of my book reviews on GoodReads right here, by the way.

Still reading: Tim Ferriss’ 4-hour Body, Herding Tigers, Moonwalking With Einstein, Parenting, On Writing by Stephen King. Might take to Shinnecock: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight and The Innocent by David Baldacci.

As noted in previous iterations of this column, I have issues.

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