Busy All the Time but It's Fun

March 8, 2010

Busy All the Time but It's Fun

By: Matthew Wilson

When I came to the University of Oklahoma I didn’t know what major I wanted to choose. It was suggested to me that I check out Public Relations and when I saw the opportunities, it looked like a good idea.

When I saw that there were different fields to the PR profession and that one of those was sports PR, I got excited because Norman has one of the best sports PR offices in the nation.

Craig Moran is the assistant director contact for are women’s soccer, baseball of the OU Athletics Communications office.

Craig has been in the sports PR field for eight years and graduated for Bowling Green State University with a bachelor’s degree in sports information and a minor in journalism. He started his career as an intern for the University of Detroit-Mercy and with the Toledo Storm hockey team.

Craig started work at OU as the contact for the men’s and women’s gymnastics team and then was hired fulltime as the contact for women’s soccer and baseball.

“I was very excited to land my first full-time position at a large Division I university,” said Moran. “After working a few years at smaller schools and in minor league hockey, I felt like all of the hard work had finally paid off.”

When observing what he does for a brief period of time, it is clear that Craig works very hard with the day-to-day operations of the communications professional. SoonerSports.com is the key tool to get information out to the public for the OU Athletics Communications office.

According to Craig, “A lot of the old school methods continue to get weeded out. Instead of solely providing information for the media, we are becoming our own news source and trying to drive more and more traffic to our web site.”

For any future professional out there, Craig says that a sports PR professional always must be on the search for new ways to reach the public, like OU Athletics on Twitter and Facebook.

“I knew working as an intern at Oklahoma would lead to good things. That is exactly why I took the job in the first place,” added Moran. “But I didn’t see myself staying longer than a year or two, and never would have expected seven years now working in not only one of best communication offices in the nation, but one of the best athletics departments.”

Watching Craig I realized that each day Craig wakes up and gets to work around sports. Growing up in Norman, this is a job that could be a dream come true for me. If you are looking for a job that you could love, this would definitely be it.

The image of OU is courtesy of the University of Oklahoma Athletic Department

What does the future hold?

What does the future hold?

Katie Puckett  

Well, I wish I knew the answer to this question, especially since I will be graduating from college in two and a half weeks. It's something I've been asking myself since for quite a while. When I was a freshman at OU, graduating seemed so far away, like it would never come, now four years later, here I am.  

What I really always dreamed of was writing for a magazine in Manhattan, just like you see in the movies. I even went over spring break to visit Time Inc. where I know someone in the pr department. It wasn't my first time in NYC, but it was the first time I went thinking I could actually live there. After a week of walking around in the rain, wearing a wool coat and a scarf nearing the end of March and paying $30 for brunch, I began to think seriously about things.  

Being from Oklahoma City, I always thought I would move away from here. As I have grown up, matured and figured a few things out, I've realized this place isn't so bad. I always thought I was the kind of person that could just pack their stuff and leave, but now I really can't think of what it would be like to move away from home. I have grown to appreciate Oklahoma and everything it has to offer.  

Who knows what the future holds. If I was living the ideal life, I'd already have a PR job by now. I'm nearing the end and it's scary, but I know wherever life takes me, it will be for the best!

NYC or OKC?

NYC or OKC

The first time I remember seeing my mom reading her magazines was when I was around 5 years old. Every night she would sit and read Vogue, Bergdorf Goodman and tons of other magazines of all different types. I don't know if it was the glossy pages full of bright, colorful pictures or the fact that it was my mom reading it, but after that magazines became a sort of obsession. I couldn't read but I would sit there for hours looking at the countless stories, advertisements and pictures full of glamorous things and people.

Of all the things that have changed since I was 5, the one thing that hasn't is my interest in magazines. Although that's been a steady part of my life, I've had my share of 180s. Born and raised in Oklahoma, all I could think about when I was a teenager is getting out. It's boring. It's slow. Nothing ever happens here. There is nothing to do. Those were just a few of my reasons for wanting to leave.

When I hit 20, something changed. All those reason I had for leaving suddenly became reasons for staying. I started to appreciate the simplicity of life here. Maybe it was maturity, comfort or something of that nature. No matter what caused it, I reached a point where the more I travelled, the more I enjoyed returning home.

As much potential as Oklahoma has, it is still not the ideal place to go into Magazine industry. So there is my problem. Sure, I can still go into the business and stay here which is probably what I'll end up doing, but it would be hard to beat the excitement of working for a prestigious magazine based out of New York City.

With graduation coming up, we all have a lot of big decisions to make. It's a pivotal time in all of our lives. As scary as it is, I'm a big believer in fate and like to think that things happen for a reason. I think maybe that is why these HUGE decisions that I will be faced with don't scare me as much as they should. There is so much opportunity and so many different things possible. With those endless possibilities, there are a lot of chances for things to go wrong but I find some sort of peace in the fact that maybe it is out of our hands. The only thing we can do is our best and go wherever that takes us. So no matter what happens in the future, whether I end up here in an industry I never expected or in some busy city working for a magazine, I know I'll be happy.

http://www.style.com/vogue/

http://www.bergdorfgoodman.com/