Jack Cavanaugh, Veteran Sportswriter and Biographer, Returns to Alma Mater to Speak

On October 1 and 2, veteran sportswriter and biographer Jack Cavanaugh returned to Syracuse University for Orange Central Homecoming + Reunion. Cavanaugh spoke and read from his work as part of the Nonfiction Reading Series, sponsored by the Writing Program and the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies.

A Syracuse University alumnus and great storyteller, Cavanaugh commented on how different the SU campus looks now than it did when he was a student, when he played basketball and baseball, majored in Political Science, and wrote for the Daily Orange. Although Cavanaugh says that his experience at the DO helped him tremendously in his career, it was in an SU classroom that Cavanaugh decided he wanted to go into journalism. During his freshman year, a police reporter from the Syracuse Post Standard visited his class and talked about his job, real-world work that Cavanaugh found fascinating and exciting. At that moment, Cavanaugh decided he would be a reporter.

During his 50-year career in journalism, Cavanaugh has covered sports for the New York Times, contributed to Sports Illustrated, Reader's Digest, Golf and Tennis magazines and the Sporting News, and served as a reporter for ABC and CBS News. Cavanaugh, who has interviewed everyone from Muhammad Ali to Richard Nixon, talked about his ability to get people to open up to him, advising students to ask good, open-ended questions and be well-prepared. He encouraged students in Professional Writing Instructor Molly Voorheis' WRT 105 class, a learning community for students majoring in Sport Management, to get experience wherever they can—writing for the Daily Orange or their hometown papers, working for minor league teams in sales or marketing, or announcing. However, he said the most important part of being a good writer is doing research. He finds out about people—their families, their interests—and draws on what he learns as a way to strike a common chord. It has worked, and he has often been granted interviews that other reporters can't get.

Cavanaugh is also author of three nonfiction books, Giants Among Men: How Robustelli, Huff, Gifford, and the Giants Made New York a Football Town and Changed the NFL (Random House, 2008), Tunney: Boxing's Brainiest Champ and His Upset of the Great Jack Dempsey (Random House, 2006), and Damn the Disabilities: Full Speed Ahead (WRS Publishing, 1995). Tunney was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in biography.

In her introduction to Cavanaugh's reading, Writing Program Director Eileen Schell noted the impact that Cavanaugh has had in terms of opening up sports writing. Schell remarked that Cavanaugh, one of Syracuse University's favorite sons, is a consummate teacher who has done painstaking historical research, helping people understand the potential that sports writing has to illuminate people, events, and places.

Cavanaugh, who has taught at Fairfield University and Columbia University, had some words of wisdom for student writers: "Notice things. Be curious," he said. "Some of the best writers focus on things that haven't been done before."