Welcome: Our Interconnected (Sports) World

Hello there, and welcome! I’m glad you stopped by.

This space is designed as a general catch-all for my ideas and what inspires me across the international sports-, history-, and communications worlds.

Why focus on these three “hats”? Many people silo these off into individual industries. But in fact, from my professional experiences as well as what I’ve learned in the field, today’s sports, communications, and history worlds are in fact intricately intertwined.

It’s no secret that #EverythingHasAHistory. Historians have an intimate understanding of this and many are more proactively reminding the public of the larger-term context of today’s movements, ideas, and events. But history is instructive in other ways.   

The rapid changes in the ways we communicate and interact with each other are not without precedent. A general grasp of this background informs how we craft messages, reach out to target audiences, and harness platforms across geographic and cultural borders to construct effective public relations, public affairs, and public history campaigns.

The same is true within the sports sphere. Disruption across the global sports arena is reconfiguring how we consume, digest, and interact with sports. Understanding specific histories helps shed light on what is occurring in today’s professional, elite, college, and amateur sports worlds.  Utilizing a robust suite of communications skills and tools helps translate this background into today’s context – and avoid messaging and PR blunders.

  • Why has the NBA taken off so strongly in China? There’s a long history to that.
  • Why is India increasingly viewed as one of the next big football (soccer)markets, who is positioning themselves to help them, and why? There’s a fascinating history to that.
  • Why is today’s rise of the ‘activist athlete’ different from the last wave, and how is this notable? You’ve guessed it: there’s a history to that, too.

As you’ve surmised, my focal point is French sport – football (soccer) and basketball, specifically.  I’ll use the term ‘football’ to reference football (soccer), perhaps the most global of sports, and American football to talk about that unique discipline. But I’ll also post on other sports, such as skiing and rugby, as well as about the larger trends influencing and disrupting today’s global sports world.

All ideas posted here are my own, and do not represent those of my clients or employers, past or present. And naturally, all information found within these posts derive from unclassified materials obtained in the public realm…unless they’re based on unclassified interviews, which will be noted as will government and press archival sources, when utilized.