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Leveling The Playing Field
Good morning!
We are so thrilled that the legendary Sarah Spain joined us on How I Got the Call Up this week. A longtime friend of The GIST (and hero of our newsletter team), Sarah shared incredible advice on carving out a space for yourself in sports: Find your ikigai (more on what that means below).
Spain discussed her pivot from her original passions — acting and comedy — to her iconic sports career as an ESPN journalist. Scroll on for sage advice on finding your own ikigai, with plenty of inspiration to power you through this Thursday.
P.S. Did you know we’re also publishing How I Got the Call Up on YouTube? Our glimpse into Sarah’s recording studio is everything.
- Love, Ellen & Jacie
⭕ A Venn diagram exercise
📣 Sarah Spain is good — and she knows it: A collegiate heptathlete, Spain carried that “do it all” energy into her career. She heads up content at iHeart Women’s Sports, records daily women’s sports updates for over 500 iHeart radio stations nationwide and a daily women’s sports podcast, and has a casual side hustle at espnW. Whew.
- Spain didn’t always dream of working in sports — in fact, “literally nobody mentioned it to me as a career path. It didn’t occur to me.” Her early experiences chasing a comedy career revealed her true strengths and weaknesses, prompting her to create a job in sports tailor-made for her from the ground up.
💡 The takeaways: Spain describes the Japanese term ikigai as the center of the Venn diagram showing what you’re good at and passionate about, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for. For example, Spain’s skills were more in humor and quick thinking than in true acting, and the sports world sorely needed a woman analyst who could bring wittiness to her work. Voila.
- How can you combine your passions with what you’re really good at? Her top piece of advice requires some serious self-reflection, but also realistic knowledge of what the world needs. She knew fans wanted to see more of athletes’ personalities, so she used humor to draw athletes out.
- So how can you find that white space? Look for the thing that you wish existed. “There [was] no women in sports that gets to be funny and sarcastic. They either have to be a supermodel sideline reporter or so serious…I want to be Kenny Mayne and do something funny.”
- If you’re specifically dreaming of a sports journalism career, Spain knows exactly what will make you the best: be detail-oriented, overprepared, a good listener, fair to your subjects, and curious. Read everything, all the time. Oh, and don’t use AI: “It’s always wrong on women’s sports.” Noted.
🎤 Mic drop moment: “The beginning of my career was proving I could make it, both to myself and others, proving I could hang in a male-dominated space on Around the Horn, having a nightly woman-hosted national radio show, all that stuff. And now I've stepped into [finding] what is the most satisfying and what feels like I'm gonna leave something behind.… How do I change the women's sports space, get it into the next place that it needs to be, and open the door for all the women coming after me?”
📖 Unlock the Japanese secret to a long and healthy life with “Ikigai” by Héctor Garcia and Francesc Miralles.
📰 Sarah talked about the importance of investigative journalism, praising her longtime colleague and friend Pablo Torre. Read more about his landmark piece on the LA Clippers in this Q&A from The Athletic.
🎧 You can listen to Sarah talk sports every day on the Good Game with Sarah Spain podcast, or catch her on one of our favorite pods: Welcome to the Party with Julie Foudy and Abby Wambach.
🤔 Welcome to the Coach’s Corner, where we answer reader-submitted questions about working in sports. This week’s question comes to us from Jaysh — she asked:
- The media industry can be an unpredictable place, especially for reporters trying to build a lasting career. You found your niche and remained a prominent face across sports journalism for years. What do you think has been key to building that kind of longevity in an industry that's constantly changing?
“Whatever it is you're really good at, just deeply lean into that. If you're a great researcher, if you're a really good long-form interviewer, if you're funny and clever, if you're quick and smart, like whatever the thing is that separates you from the pack and that you can really lean into, hopefully you can do that across any space.”
- Then it's just about consistently doing the work in the right space, whether that’s TikTok, podcasts, or investigative journalism. For Sarah, she’s a fast writer and naturally curious, which helps her write scripts and interviews for her daily show.
She also stresses the importance of treating people well and building genuine relationships. “Having a good rapport with anyone who comes on the show — whether I've just met them or I've known them for 20 years — makes me good at what I do in whatever space I'm doing it.”
- Working hard, staying kind, and being fair are a few more of Sarah’s keys to building longevity in the industry because while trends may change, people wanting to work with good people never will.
⏭️ Next week, we’re interviewing Leela Srinivasan, CEO of Parity, a sports marketing and sponsorship platform with a mission to close the gender income and opportunity gap in pro sports. Have questions about breaking into sports when you don’t have any industry experience? Submit it here, and we’ll ask her for you.
🏈 Want to dive deeper into the NFL convo? At The GIST, everyone’s invited. That’s why we launched our free-to-play NFL Weekly Pick’ems game: quick, fun, and easy picks with weekly and season-long prizes on the line.
- Just ask Gretchen, who won last week’s challenge and scored a $100 NFL Shop gift card for their efforts. All you have to do is choose who’ll win each matchup this week, and you could be next.
💌 Consider this your official invite. Nothing to lose, lots to learn, and a whole NFL community to gain. FOMO waits for no fan — make your picks now.
🏆 Delaney Kinsella — a 15-year-old student from Mercer Island, Washington — won the New York Times 9th Annual Student Podcast Contest for her episode Rough and Tumble: Our Home for Women’s Sports. Remembering this name for a future Sports Emmy winner.
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