WRITER—BROADCASTER—PHOTOGRAPHER—MUSIC/SPORTS ANALYST—VIDEOGRAPHER—PODCASTER

Hey, it’s Bobby Manning. I’ve been working toward becoming the premiere multi-media sports analyst since 2012, when I started by writing sports blogs about the Red Sox, Bruins, Patriots and Celtics for NESportsBlog.com. Throughout high school I covered the Peabody, Massachusetts high school Tanners, who featured a program legend in Doug Santos. He drove the team to the state’s D-I quarterfinals during my junior and senior year while rushing for over 2,000 yards each season. The connections I formed with those teams, post-game interviews and articles inspired me to push toward becoming a sports beat writer as my constant coverage of the team drew a social media following from high school circles around the state.

At the same time, I began my work in the digital world helping to create TheTannerTimes.net. I worked with Mark Vandeusen of CelticsLife.com as I honed in on basketball as my area of focus in Boston’s pro sports scene. He taught me how to craft ideas, write structurally and I parlayed his editing style into my own at The Tanner Times. Around then, the Celtics had sold off Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, opening the door for a lottery 2013-14 season and tickets below $30. I went to over a dozen C’s games, moved up to the front, became fascinated by the wheeling and dealing of Danny Ainge and spoke with media members about my passion to become a sports writer.

Adam Kaufman and Damon Amendolara, two local broadcasters who attended Syracuse University became significant influences among many others at the time. It made me fixate on SU as my dream school early on, and I did everything I could to form early connections with the school. I gave University of Miami and Boston University a thought, but if I got into Newhouse I was inevitably going there. In 2015, I finally got the news and I was in.

I also had the great fortune of meeting Kevin O’Connor around this time. I’d always read CelticsBlog.com and hoped to one day write there, perhaps in college or after. O’Connor organized the team then, and after a long conversation with him before a Celtics game about my goals, football coverage, high school editing and C’s writing I received a stunning email two weeks later. O’Connor wanted me at CelticsBlog. I began writing Brandon Bass, Evan Turner pieces, integrating video into articles and studying analytics to write for one of the web’s most popular Celtics platforms in 2016 where I still write today. O’Connor soon moved on to lead NBA coverage for Bill Simmons’ Ringer. I’ve been blessed to have a variety of incredible mentors like him.

By February, 2016 I met Nick Gelso, the CEO of CelticsBlog’s video and audio partner, then-CLNS Radio. He pitched me about coming on the company’s Celtics Post Game Show with Justin Poulin and Jon Duke, two podcast voices around the C’s. Growing up quiet and shy, with speech issues at a young age, I didn’t imagine broadcasting. But I went on, had fun, kept making appearances and soon became a regular host on the show. As of 2019, I lead the Celtics Post Game Show, organize its hosts each night, produce and market the show to our thousands of nightly listeners.

I spoke with Gelso, still an incredible influence on me, about starting my own podcast around that time. “The Bobcast” was born that summer before my senior year of college. Each week, it hosted entertainers, journalists, athletes and eventually became a platform for me to elaborate on my takes on sports news and learn from professionals in their fields. It gave them a chance to reflect on how they got to where they are today and became an enormous reflective, learning experience for me. “From aspiration to accomplishment,” it became known, as I pushed the show to hundreds of weekly listeners through social media.

My next aim became to join The Daily Orange once my freshman year began in August. I connected early with Sam Blum, the sports editor, during a spring visit to SU. At the house, I learned of the paper’s beats, history and greats and pictured it at the center of my college experience. Paul Schwedelson, the fall’s editor, welcomed me with a volleyball beat and introduction to campus after I drove up Mt. Olympus with my mom and dad to Day Hall. Thank God I met Dan Scott, a man of similar interests and energy, as my roommate through Facebook. As I worked on volleyball, largely ignoring the social connections of the first few weeks of college, him and my friend Tyler Gilman from home became who I leaned on.

When I arrived back from a game at my room two weeks int school, I was finally getting used to campus. The nerves and tears of being hundreds of miles away from Boston after my parents departed disappeared. A September phone call from my mom changed the direction of my college experience and my life: my dad had leukemia.

My life took on rapid maturing and a shift in perspective since then. I looked away from my obsessive sports endeavors and focused more on family and expanding my knowledge and perspective. Freshman year became defined by seven hour Greyhound rides to Boston on Friday, a few nights at Beth Israel Hospital, then the same route back. I pictured leaving SU nearly every week, moving back home, simplifying my life as some days I’d attend Spanish at 8 a.m., then come back to Day Hall and sleep off life until afternoon classes.

I slowly built a support system around me. I learned the helplessness and fatigue set on me came from life events, and by the second half of that year learned how to cope through therapy with other students facing life challenges. Dan, Anthony Obas, Simone Ayers, Jael Jones, Siyaka Taylor-Lewis, Caitlin Easy, Ohemaa Dixon and I formed The Village — a social media visual venture to express our collective talents, but also a circle of friendship to make it through all of our first years at Syracuse.

I continued to write with the DO, but left time for Spanish, history, English and my social circle. Those other areas expanded my vision for my sports content. Economics and politics intrigued me, by sophomore year I became an amateur chef.

Paul, Jon Mettus and Chris Libonati, my first DO editors, still deserve enormous thanks from me. They committed fully to my early lessons as a writer, while giving me the space I didn’t know I needed to grieve.

In the final days of my first year at Syracuse, I finally felt acclimated after severe pits of depression taking over much of my first months there. Then I got the second of that year’s two dreadful phone calls. After his erasure of cancer that freed him into the world in March, my dad didn’t have much time left in May. My mom and him all year pleaded for me to stay at school and focus on myself, now she was calling me home. After our first beers, several days of great memories amongst family and difficult final words he passed away on May 9, 2017.

I made the difficult decision to stay at Syracuse and I’m forever grateful I did. It was on his advice and final words that I did so. Moving to South Campus with Gilman and Obas made Syracuse far more comfortable, I started a fun women’s soccer beat with the DO and great weather returned. We cooked omelettes at home, watched Colbert and blasted music in our home tucked away far from the chaos on campus.

Turmoil defined my 3.5 years at Syracuse — a fraternity espoused racist sentiments in a leaked ritual video, my friends got attacked in a racially-motivated off-campus assault and in my final semester racist graffiti flooded campus before the New Zealand shooter’s manifesto appeared on the school’s Greek forum. All of this taught me much about society, how outside influences and stress can impact you mentally and how important a close support system is.

I’ll always appreciate friends like Taylor McCloud, Peter Marlo, Matt Feldman, Anthony Vasquez and too many more to name that made those years memorable. My media spirit became collaborative: Bobcasts with friends on the big issues in society, integrating Taylor and Andrew into the Post Game Show and investigating Syracuse’s plans for a Onondaga Lake beach with my friend AJ Carrion.

Through the middle of my college years I became more fascinated by the city of Syracuse, NY and its people. For my degree, I covered Syracuse’s residents marching in Washington DC after the Parkland Shooting, and housing during my junior year: covering the local impact of Trump’s federal policy, the opioid crisis, housing restoration efforts and other factors on Syracuse’s ability to house its residents.

The highlight of my college years was definitively Spain in 2018. We traveled across the southern portion of the country. Our group became family-level close: George, Kenny, Harrison, Dylon, Neema, Andre, Chuck, Aidan, Kessia, Jayla, again, too many to name. I met my first girlfriend, Bella, in November. I saw Belgium, Amsterdam, family I didn’t know I had in Ireland and took two incredible trips to Italy. I learned massive amounts of Spanish living in Madrid with my roommate Tommy and Ana, my host mom.

I also met the Spanish Celtics fans, who rally each year for CelticsCon, which I featured in CelticsBlog. My feature-driven spirit produced various articles from my travels throughout my college years.

My tenure at Syracuse gave me the opportunity to produce a podcast at the Cape Cod Baseball League, learn DSLR photography, study sports analytics, Pan-Africanism, information technology, Adobe editing, videography and FOIA. I contributed to a major data-drive feature for a major contribution that’ll publish soon. I ran the Boston Marathon during my sophomore year, training every day on South Campus and raising $7,000 for Beth Israel in my father’s memory. Before graduation, I interned with the Syracuse Post-Standard covering odd sports in Central New York and continue covering Syracuse basketball and the ACC with SB Nation.

I graduated in December, 2019 having hosted podcasts for CelticsBlog and NunesMagician, produced videos and audio for CLNS Media and the Daily Orange and written music features on my own blog. My hope is to write sports and culture features, cover a beat on either, or work in podcasting. Please feel free to contact me regarding any opportunities. My resume is available upon request through my contact information below.

Email: BMann260@gmail.com

Twitter: @RealBobManning

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realbobmanning/