Can you make a living as a Sports Historian?

Mets82

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Apr 5, 2008
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I have a question. As you know, based on being on this board, I love sports, especially the old days of sports. Im also a fan of old time television. Old tv shows, old tv commericals etc. Well, I've been looking for work for a while and wondered "Can you make a living being a sports historian or sports archivist"? Since this is a sports board, where do you think, something like a sports historian or sports archivist would be needed? I ask this because I find the old days of sports incredible. I wish I was alive back in those old days.
 
Someone would have to be willing to pay someone for producing historical data, and they would have to choose you to be that someone. ESPN might be able to pay someone to produce historical accounts for them, but there just aren't many jobs for the Bill Jameses of the world.

I think you would be disappointed if you had been a sports fan half a century or more ago. There were lots of events to see but hardly anyone saw them. I remember when Cassius Clay fought Sonny Liston in the 1960s, and our local radio station announcer would get after-the-round ticker-tape summaries that he would read to us. He didn't even bother to pull a Ronald Reagan and develop a make believe live account from them.

Televised sports reports consisted of a guy reading the same pages that he would otherwise be reading on the radio, with an inanimate, lettered scoreboard behind him. Most game summaries we read and most descriptions of historic plays were written by others who had read previously published accounts, rather than having seen them themselves.
 
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I've collect videos and film for years and I've talked to many people who work in the field. If you love it and get paid for it that's great. I've sold video to some people . Many didn't want to pay anything for the footage so if they didn't pay they didn't get it. It's just a hobby for me. I don't know if I would enjoy it if I had to do it for a living. Some of the best sports videos I've seen are home movies . I purchased a box of old Super 8 movies from someone who had some incredible footage that I have looked at but haven't transferred yet. He lived in the New England Area and use his movie camera to not only tape the event he went to , he also taped the drive to the event. Some from the late sixties , early 1970's. Red Sox games, Bruins. He also recorded some of the filming of Jaws at Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
 
To be honest, I didnt think you can make a living out of it but since I know about sports, like the people on this board do, I might as well go for it. If you read the links above, its not a bad way to make a living.
 
Any one of the sports Hall of Fame's would have positions for archivists and historians on staff.

I went to the Basketball Hall of Fame a couple of times and its library was locked and unstaffed both times.

Well, I did some research and it seems like being a sports historian would pay well. Median salary is $54,530. Its all listed here:...

The median salary figure of $54,530 was given in one of the linked articles as the May 2008 salary for all historians, not sports historians.

...I would have liked to been alive for the '69 Mets World Series win(obviously) and the Super Bowls.

I was in high school during the 1969 World Series. All of the World Series Games were day games. Classrooms did not have TVs back then, but because the World Series was so much more important than it is now, the radio broadcasts were carried through the intercom system starting at the end of the school day, which was around 2:30 PM, so I only got to see the weekend games on TV.
 
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I have a question. As you know, based on being on this board, I love sports, especially the old days of sports. Im also a fan of old time television. Old tv shows, old tv commericals etc. Well, I've been looking for work for a while and wondered "Can you make a living being a sports historian or sports archivist"? Since this is a sports board, where do you think, something like a sports historian or sports archivist would be needed? I ask this because I find the old days of sports incredible. I wish I was alive back in those old days.

Highly doubtful. Historians have been replaced by computers. Just about any stat or figure can be found by typing a few key words into Google. And anyone can do that.
 
I think there are some people that don't have access to a computer or maybe dont like a computer. I would try to make it as easy as possible for people to get there statistics because what would you rather have? A book of stats and sports scores etc. or a computer printout. I say computer printout because if you want to look up something on the computer or show it to somebody, how are you going to show to them? Yes, via computer or whatever but some people may not access to a computer or just dont like it for some reason.
 
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