The band hated me. Bob Knight yelled at me. And a couple of football players called me out during a field trip to the Art Institute.
But I also went to the Kentucky Derby with The Daily’s sports budget absorbing the lion’s share of the cost.
The lesson in all this?
You don’t get into journalism to be popular, but if you play your cards right, you can savor steak dinners and get chocolate mints left on your pillow — all on somebody else’s dime.
Whoa! You spent four years at one of the world’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, and the best perspective you can offer us is this shallow, self-centered fluff?
Well, if you put it that way, I could opt for the Dave Barry technique of fishing for laughs by using grossness as bait.
Barry has won a Pulitzer Prize. I once won an Illinois College Press Association award. How can I go wrong?
Lesson: Do not laugh at your interview subject when something begins to drip, then dangle, out of his nose.
This actually happened — the dripping, not the laughing — while several Daily reporters and I were interviewing former NU president Arnold Weber for a series on why the football and men’s basketball teams were a farce. Was the administration to blame for being too rigid on academic standards? Too tight with the budget?
At one point, Weber, a heavy smoker, snorted and harrumphed before answering.
From his mouth came the words — “We want to win,” yada, yada, yada — and from his nostril came … well, I’m still not sure exactly how to describe it.
To my knowledge, this is the first time it is being reported in the Daily. (Sorry, Arnie, but the statute of limitations has expired, and I need all the original material I can get).
So why did the band hate you?
If you can’t serve up gratuitous cheap shots in the college paper, where can you? (Actually, The New York Times’ op-ed page, but I digress.)
Why did Knight yell at you?
I asked him to clarify his comments.
What happened at the Art Institute?
Two football players made it crystal clear to me that they were no fans of mine. Not a huge deal; it comes with the territory. (Now that’s a lesson!)
As the tour of the museum continued, one player pointed to a painting and asked our T.A. a question in a tone that he probably considered to be intellectually earnest. He ended up sounding more like Alicia Silverstone in “Clueless”:
“So is this, like, the original?”
A few weeks later, grades were posted on the door of the T.A.’s office. Each student was identified by Social Security Number.
Using my name and those of some friends as reference points, we determined that the list was also in alphabetical order. That enabled us to ascertain that this particular football player had pulled an F. (But we didn’t print it.)
You could accept Northwestern getting squashed on the field because it had superior students. But if it was going to have a player flunk Intro to Art History, couldn’t he at least be a ferocious pass-rusher that struck fear into the hearts of opposing quarterbacks rather than a second-stringer like this guy?
Most memorable incidents, though, occurred while zipping through the Midwest to cover games. For weekend trips, we rented cars from the Budget on Green Bay Road in Wilmette rather than from the one in downtown Evanston.
Why schlep up there? We noticed the Budget in Wilmette was closed on Sundays.
Generally we needed the car for three days. Hit the road Friday. Head back to Evanston on Sunday.
But we booked our reservations for two days. As long as we had the car back on the lot before they opened shop Monday morning, they only knew to charge us for Friday and Saturday.
Naturally, this allowed us to devote more of our budget to sirloin.
Victor Chi, Medill ’91, covers the San Jose Sharks and the NHL for the San Jose Mercury News, and he will be returning to Northwestern for the third consecutive summer to teach in the Cherub program. He worked at Daily Sports for four years, covering wrestling, softball, women’s volleyball and men’s basketball. He also was a sports editor and a sports columnist for The Daily.
