In 2019, I reached out to Matt on Twitter. I had recently read a book he published about high school football, and I had to tell him how much I enjoyed it. We had previously connected on Twitter because we both were writing about high school football; him in Dallas and me in San Antonio. That’s just how it worked back then on Twitter, as you tend to follow people with similar interests. He has since published another book, which again, I enjoyed and bragged about it to him!
Did you always want to be a writer? Did you have any mentors growing up helping you.
When I was a kid, I liked to write and create, including a lot of dumb stuff. But I don’t think I ever had specific thoughts of “I want to be a writer.” But I was the sports editor at the Apollo High School newspaper in Glendale, Arizona and I think that’s when I started considering journalism or some other kind of writing career.
I had a lot of great journalism professors at the University of Arizona who encouraged me, and they were my early mentors. I played a lot of sports growing up, so writing about sports seemed like a natural thing to do – and much more exciting than other subjects. But my first goal, or dream, was to be a humor columnist and my writing influences were humorists such as Dave Barry, Lewis Grizzard, Erma Bombeck and virtually every stand-up comedian I watched before age 18.
How did you get the job at Dallas Morning News, and what sports did you cover? Any memorable games or players? If you covered other things non sports, what were some of the more popular things.
I had the good fortune of covering a lot of things soon after graduating from college as I worked at small papers in Arizona and Utah. Maybe the most memorable stretch was when I covered the 1997 NBA Finals (Utah Jazz vs. Chicago Bulls) for the Provo Herald in Provo, UT. Back in those days, media actually got seats very close to the court, and for the famous “Michael Jordan plays while sick” game during that series, I was just a couple rows behind the Bulls bench. I can pick myself out in some grainy YouTube highlights from that game, although it’s hard for me to even recognize myself when I had hair.
I joined the Dallas Morning News in 1999 as a sports copy editor and page designer, although I wanted to be a writer, of which there were no openings at that time. My intent was to convince them that I should be a writer, so in addition to my editing duties, I volunteered to cover some things as a freelancer. I had written humor columns for my previous newspapers, and I connected with an editor in the DMN Arts department who liked my humor columns and they started running them in the DMN. That led to writing some offbeat feature stories and humor pieces and a weekly column called “Humor Me.” Having done all of that made me a candidate to become the DMN’s Collin County sports columnist, a position that was created in 2003. The Collin County edition was scrapped a couple years later, but the DMN made me its high school sports columnist in 2005.
Over the next 12 years, that was my main role at the DMN, although I also wrote the humor columns and was part of the sports coverage team for big events, such as Cowboys and Mavericks playoffs, the Super Bowl, NCAA Football Championship and NCAA Final Four. Some of the best memories were getting to meet and interview so many great people, including high school athletes and coaches and professional athletes who were truly cool people when not on the field or court – notably Dirk Nowitzki, DeMarcus Ware and Elvis Andrus. For a writer, it was a great experience. I even spent an hour watching a minor league baseball game with actor Ethan Hawke for a story. My time at the DMN gave me a lot of cool opportunities.
Did you ever get to enjoy a sporting event as a fan and not as somebody from the media covering it?
There’s some exhilaration to covering big events as a member of the media, and I enjoyed my job, but I never really got to enjoy those events as a fan. I was always interviewing, researching or crafting a story on deadline. It was exciting to see my photo in the paper with my column in the mornings, and I was proud of my work, but when you have to write a 600-word column and your deadline is sometimes just a few minutes after the game ends, the stress can wear you out.
What made you switch from writing for a newspaper to working for the Frisco ISD? What does a Facilitator for Athletics do?
The challenges that newspapers and media are facing was certainly part of the reason, but after 18 years at the DMN, I had also come to a point in my career where I wanted a better work/life balance. My wife and I have three sons and I wanted to be able to focus more on them before they all grew up.
My work at the DMN connected me with a lot of coaches and athletic directors, and one of them was Frisco ISD’s David Kuykendall. He said Frisco ISD was creating a position of Facilitator for Athletics, which is a lot like a sports information director at the college level, and he thought I might be interested. I definitely was, given that my kids all were in Frisco ISD and the job would still allow me to write and be a part of high school athletics.
I enjoyed my time at the DMN, but the move to Frisco ISD came at the right time and has been a perfect fit. (Well, I think so, anyway). My role includes media relations, writing content for the website and social media, and also some marketing. I work with great people and it’s a very fulfilling job.
What got you interested in writing books? Do you have more on the horizon?
Back in 2009, a literary agent reached out to me about doing a nonfiction book about staycations. She was looking for a humorous dad’s perspective for the book, and I agreed to do it. I got paid to write “The Great American Staycation,” so in that regard it was a success, but after I wrote the first draft, the publisher’s vision seemed to be different from the original plan of the literary agent and me. So I wasn’t crazy about the final product.
I decided that if I wrote something else, it would be something that I did for the joy of it – not the money. That has resulted in two novels: “Fourth Down in Texas,” which is centered around Texas high school football, and “Three Seats from the Hero,” which is not a sports book at all. They’re both very different, but I enjoyed creating each.
I don’t have another novel in the works, but maybe someday. My latest hobby/time-waster (ha!) is writing music. I wrote lyrics to about 20 songs, and thanks to the wonder of A.I., I was able to create a virtual band to bring the songs to life. I’m a writer who loves music, not a musician, but music creators are maybe the coolest new toy for me since the original Nintendo. My band’s name is Burning Wicks and the songs are on all the streaming services, earning me royalties that are – and I don’t mean to brag – nearly enough to buy a Chick-Fil-A value meal.