Woj Is On My Mount Rushmore Of Influential People

Woj retired on Wednesday morning and I was blown away. Woj bombs have a tendency of doing that, but this one hit different.

Woj is one of the best to ever do it. Newsbreakers are my personal heroes. I know the hard work and dedication it takes and it is a job few people could really do. There is the glamor of breaking the story, but before that happens, there is so much relationship building that goes into being able to talk to the right people to get those scoops. And when you get them, you do it on their timeline. So when you're as connected as Adam Schefter or Adrian Wojnarowski, you are working on hundreds of other people's timelines. Your calendar is never your own and you are at their mercy.

I joined Twitter in 2010. My main interests in Twitter at that time were NFL and NBA news. I got very into Twitter over the coming years and Schefty and Woj were my guys. They got me into that aspect of social media that helped me land this job. So I feel both guys were extremely influential in my career.

I also had heard of Barstool, but knew nothing about it. But I was a huge fan of Mike & Mike in the morning. In what turned out to be a very fateful call in, Big Cat called into Mike & Mike to talk about #LetBigCatEat and he firmly came onto my radar. That was because of Mike Greenberg as I'm a huge Greeny stan. Yada yada yada, I got put on to Barstool and here I am.

The Mount Rushmore wouldn't be complete without Big Cat who along with being my friend is one of the biggest influences on my life. When I pushed to produce a radio show for Sirius back in January 2017, volunteering to do it after hours and for free, after weeks of nearly begging, I was green lit. There were two things of note: the show was after hours, from 6-7pm every week day and it was Big Cat's show. He'd have to be ok with it. At that point I was just the guy who scheduled their ads. The office was small enough where we knew each other, but not too much outside of topical sports interests. In our first sit down he ok'd my role on the show and we were off. 

Six years later, I moved my family halfway across the country so I can still be involved in that very show. I also stream NFL and NBA games with him, work closely on his coffee brand, and serve as his liaison for a lot of things he doesn't like to do. He has helped me a ton in my career and he's obviously the George Washington of my Mount Rushmore of influential people. 

*On the show I said I'd probably remove Greeny and sub-in Dave Portnoy. However, after further consideration, I'd want to consolidate Woj and Schefty as they're both similar in the Twitter area. So I'd add Dave to the mix as he helped get me started and has supported me and kept me in the loop for a ton of things. So my Mount Rushmore of influential people is:

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Big Cat

Dave

Schefty/Woj (Twitter Newsbreakers)

Greeny

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