The moment when Jordan Schultz breaks a story, it’s a feeling that takes him back to his days playing college basketball.
For Schultz, getting a scoop is just like draining threes.
“When it’s a sizeable story and you know you’re first and everyone sees it, I would equate that to hitting your fourth three-pointer in a game,” said Schultz.
“The competitive aspect of playing basketball in college is pretty parallel to the competitive aspect of trying to break stories. The foundation of playing sports and being on a team goes into that and makes it really exciting for me on a day-to-day basis. You can always find something. If there’s not a story to break, there’s still an angle to take.”
And Schultz has taken his story-breaking talents from ESPN and Yahoo Sports to theScore as an NFL insider and NBA analyst.
For Schultz, it was an opportunity too good to pass up.
“It was huge because I hadn’t had the level of support and infrastructure around me that The Score was able to offer,” said Schultz. “I was really excited to be a part of something that I could build my brand and they could build their brand around me.”
While Schultz has been able to build relationships within the NBA, his primary focus at theScore will be the NFL. He’s built up quite the collection of contacts and relationships, which has led to regularly breaking stories. Sports fans have certainly caught on to what Schultz has been doing as he has more than 145,000 followers on Twitter.
Schultz breaks a lot of stories but he doesn’t break all of them and he’s okay with that because he just moves on to the next story.
“You can only do so much,” said Schultz. “As my parents told me when I was a kid, you can’t dance at everyone’s wedding. You always want to be first and you always want to have the next story but there’s also always going to be another story. You can’t get held up in why you didn’t get this or what happened here. These relationships that are not transactional and are genuine whether it’s with an agent, a player, a coach, GM, scout…that’s where the success ultimately comes from.”
Schultz, who now lives in New York City, grew up in Seattle and enjoyed an outstanding high school basketball career. He was a four-year starter and earned all-conference and all-district honors before moving on to Seattle University which was just eight minutes from his home. He didn’t play very much so he transferred to Division III Occidental College right outside of Los Angeles.
He was known for being a terrific shooter, from anywhere on the court.
“That’s all I could do,” said Schultz. “I was not big. I was really a phenomenal shooter with unlimited range. They used to call me ‘Satellite’ in the parking lot.”
When Schultz was first getting started in the business of sports media, his agent at the time asked him if he was interested in meeting ESPN’s Adam Schefter, one of the premier NFL insiders in the business. Schultz, of course, said yes and a meeting was arranged at the Core Club in New York City.
“I just talked to him for a good thirty minutes and I asked him how did he get into the position he was in because that’s what I wanted to do.” Schultz. “I didn’t know if it was going to be an insider but I knew I wanted to be on TV and I knew I wanted to be considered one of the best.”
Schefter stressed to him that it’s a relationship business and he had to be genuine. The other lesson that Schultz learned from Schefter was that if you wanted information from someone, you may have to offer some information in return. For instance, if a General Manager was going to give you a story, you would have to reciprocate with some helpful information. As an example, a General Manager may want to know what another team is thinking about paying a player and how that may impact his team.
“And that’s something that really stuck with me,” said Schultz. “I’m not going to be able to do it at that level that Adam has given his experience in years but I’m trying to get to that point. I was at ESPN for three years and Adam has always been good to me and that was something that really stuck out.”
Jordan Schultz was known for shooting the lights out playing college basketball and was able to transfer his competitive juices to the media world. He’s still hitting treys all over the court today, the only difference is that he’s breaking stories and is on a new team with theScore.
Peter Schwartz writes weekly sports radio features for Barrett Media. He has been involved in New York sports media for over three decades, and has worked for notable brands such as WFAN, CBS Sports Radio, WCBS 880, ESPN New York, and FOX News Radio. Peter has also served as play by play announcer for the New Yok Riptide, New York Dragons, New York Hitmen, Varsity Media and the Long Island Sports Network. You can find him on Twitter @SchwartzSports or email him at DragonsRadio@aol.com.
