Jeff Nusser: A Teacher, a Fan, and a Storyteller

            He is a teacher first, a writer second.

            Jeff Nusser Co-founded SB Nation CougCenter in August 2008. Today, he is a full-time teacher in the Puyallup school district, but still holds responsibilities as the Co-Editor for CougCenter.

            A Washington State University graduate who loves sports, Jeff really found his niche when he wrote about his beloved Cougs.

            “College basketball is really my passion.  We were fortunate to have Tony Bennett as the WSU men’s head basketball coach during my college years, so I really dove into that,” Jeff said. 

            Jeff says that it is challenging balancing being a teacher, working on CougCenter, and producing his weekly podcast.

            “I am really good at getting myself too far over my head, but I have gotten to the point where I can say no. I really just try and focus on stuff that I enjoy doing,” Jeff said. 

            Jeff graduated with a journalism degree from WSU. While a student, he was editor in chief for the Daily Evergreen and reported on local high school sports for the Lewiston Tribune.

            After college, Jeff was a writer at the News Tribune in Tacoma, and later moved to CBSSports.com serving as an editor. Seven months after he started at CBSSports.com, he said the dotcom bubble burst resulted in many companies to crash in the stock market.

            According to Investopedia, the dotcom bubble burst was a rapid rise in U.S. technology stock equity valuations fueled by investments in internet-based companies. The dotcom bubble burst caused several internet companies to go bust.

            “After the bubble, I decided I did not want a journalism lifestyle, so I went back to school to be a teacher.  But after teaching for four or five years, I really missed writing,” Jeff said.

            Jeff was an avid reader of Lookout Landing, an SB Nation site for the Seattle Mariners, and he says the site inspired him to create one for WSU fans. 

            “I saw that six of the Pac-10 teams at the time had a SB Nation site, and WSU did not have one,” Jeff said. 

            Jeff says he came up with the idea of combining his WSU basketball blog with a WSU football blog and took the idea to SB Nation which is a sports blogging network owned by Vox Media.

            “When we set up our SB Nation site for WSU there were just under 150 team sites, and now there are over 300 team sites and blogs of SB Nation channel. We setup the site for nothing, just because we wanted to talk about sports,” Jeff said.   

            In addition to being Co-founder and editor of SB Nation CougCenter, Jeff also takes the time to produce a weekly podcast for their parent company. On their podcast, Podcast vs. Everyone, Jeff says they talk about anything WSU related, politics, about their kids, and beer of course.

            “I have been working with Jeff on CougCenter since 2009. Since the two of us talk almost every day, we figured we would be fine talking once a week on a podcast given, we are very like-minded,” Craig Powers said.

            According to Forbes, podcasts create communities. It is a way of finding like-minded individuals who share your interests. Oftentimes, these communities create a kind of feed-back loop: with listeners generating content for the podcast producers. 

            Craig says that the podcast is very successful because they both have a passion for what they talk about, and people can relate to it, especially WSU fans. 

            “Jeff is a very passionate guy, and you have to be in order to write a blog like this for almost 12 years. We have seen a lot of colleagues stop contributing over the years, but Jeff loves his Cougs,” Craig said. 

            Brian Floyd, a former writer for cougfan.com, now Director of Programming for SB Nation, said that working with Jeff was an amazing experience.

            “I have known Jeff for 10 years now, but our relationship started because I commented on the CougCenter site enough that got him intrigued. He basically pushed me to write and taught us all how to write and be proper because we were all idiots off the street,” Brian said.

            Brian was a computer science major, but unfortunately, he graduated into the 2008 recession. According to wealthsimple.com, between the late 2007 and mid-2009, the period widely referred to as the “Great Recession,” the economy lost nearly 8.7 million jobs.  

            Brian says the availability of entry level jobs in his major were a rarity. He said he had to figure out what was the next step and luckily Jeff offered him a job with CougCenter. 

            “The first thing I turned into Jeff, I double spaced after periods and he almost killed me. He basically took the time, was very patient, and taught others like me how to do this sort of stuff,” Brian said. 

            Brian says that he had no journalism training and no knowledge of how to write a story, source something, or even interview someone before his time with CougCenter. 

            “He beat the bad habits out of us,” he said. “Working with Jeff was an amazing experience. CougCenter was a fun environment to throw around ideas, learn about how to be a better journalist and be a better writer.” 

             Jeff says having a space where all WSU fans and readers can come is a real driving force for him to produce content on the website. He says he loves to share his stories about WSU and events in his lifetime.

            “Storytelling never really goes out of style. I always tell people to work on how to tell a story. The more ways you can tell compelling stories, the better off you are going to be,” Jeff said.

            “Jeff is a teacher at heart, and it goes to everything he does,” Brian said.

Sources:

Jeff Nusser: jeff.nusser@gmail.com and 253-208-5209

Brian Floyd: wsufloyd@gmail.com and 206-972-2333

Craig Powers: craigpowers1@gmail.com and 509-952-3303

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dotcom-bubble.asp

https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-us/learn/2008-market-crash

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/10/12/why-are-podcasts-gaining-in-popularity/#fcfbf995321f