As teams vying for the College Football Playoff come down to the wire and college basketball launches the season with early upsets, Campus Insiders continues to grab audience share by living and breathing college sports. The platform is entrenching itself within the industry with its own shakeups, which now includes a postseason bowl game under its tent, the NOVA Home Loans Arizona Bowl Game on Dec 29. The Silver Chalice Network now boasts a portfolio of nearly 3,000 live games on its platforms as well as studio shows that include the award-winning program, The Seth Davis Show Presented by Cadillac, which is now in its third season, with its Thursday episodes serving up interviews with the likes of the NCAA’s Mark Emmert, Sen. John McCain, and head coaches such as Les Miles and Mark Dantonio.
Cynopsis Sports spoke with Seth Davis, whose resume also includes current gigs at Sports Illustrated, CBS Sports, BTN and Turner Sports, about going digital, diversifying and his advice to rookie sports journalists looking to cut their teeth in the industry.
Seth on joining Campus Insiders: Campus Insiders is in all the right places. We all know where the industry is going right now as the way that people consume information and content is clearly changing. You have to give Silver Chalice a lot of credit for their foresight for seeing this coming. When they approached me, I knew they were serious because of the infrastructure they had in place and that they weren’t trying to just string something together. I would put the content coming out of their studio up against anything else coming out right now. Of course, with their associations with the conferences, their bowl game, etc. their reach has just exploded. There are still a lot of challenges, especially since there isn’t a television granddaddy to market us, but Silver Chalice is as well positioned now to take advantage of all the sports trends we are seeing out there as any other company.
On his media career: I’m so lucky that I don’t have a real job. What I do have are these amazing relationships with not just great companies, but great brands as well. For someone who loves to write and read long-form journalism, there’s no better place than Sports Illustrated. I just had my 20-year anniversary there last summer. CBS Sports is really a classy operation and as good a culture as I’ve been around. It really feels like a family. I believe this will be my 12th NCAA Tournament with them coming up. Of course, because of their relationship with Turner on that, I now get to work with them on some of their NBA coverage. These are all dynamic companies and I think the key these days is to be nimble.
On careers in sports: If I was just coming into the business now, I couldn’t take a similar path because things have changed so much. But even back in high school and at Duke, I was always interested in writing and broadcasting. When I was at Duke, I wrote for the paper and worked on a show at a cable TV stations and I called games on radio. Back then, they were one and the same and there weren’t a whole lot of people who were doing that. Nowadays, you almost couldn’t survive without a multiple skillset. One thing that is necessary is to be entrepreneurial, you have more ability to launch your own portals or blogs and you almost have to be a businessperson as well. If I was starting out now, I would want some business experience as well.
On the state of journalism: I don’t believe that the quality of journalism has gone down, but I do recognize that the quantity has gone up. So, when you have more voices in the tent, then the first tendency is that in order for me to be heard, I need to shout. But then again, if everyone is shouting, then maybe the way to standout is to be more thoughtful. My whole message to journalism classes is to be a reporter first. Don’t just give me your opinion, go out there and do some reporting and get some information to teach me something I don’t know. Very few people can make it business just by spouting off opinions.
