Mike Uva saves two different kinds of mementos from his budding sports broadcasting career. One of them is an ever-expanding set of pictures that show him posing with mentors and heroes.
The other group is all of the rejection letters from TV stations that didn’t want to hire him.
You wouldn’t expect anything less from a 5-foot-9 defensive back who weighs 160 pounds soaking wet.
After years of covering high school sports and a stint working in media market No. 196, Uva made his return home earlier this month. The Peabody native and St. John’s Prep graduate is now a freelance sports anchor for WBZ, one of Boston’s historic affiliates, and the flagship station of the Patriots.
It is the definition of a dream job.
"It doesn’t feel real,” Uva told me on my “Sports Media Mayhem” podcast. “Any time I would come up here I'd be around the guys like [Steve] Burton and Mike Lynch. So it doesn't feel real. I still feel like I'm just up here visiting.”
Uva, who celebrated his 31st birthday on the day he accepted WBZ’s offer, didn’t take a conventional path to the anchor desk. A lifelong athlete, he played football at Assumption College in Worcester, leaving him with little time to pursue unpaid internships and fetch coffee.
So he created his own path. Uva hosted his own sports talk show at Assumption and was a relentless networker. On the day of his final game, he found out Brandon Hall, who used to cover high school sports for ESPN Boston, was on campus. When the final whistle sounded, Uva walked up to the press box and told Hall to let him know if there was ever an opportunity.
Eventually, Hall hired Uva to string for ESPN Boston, giving him a chance to be in front of the camera with the backing of the WorldWide Leader. A couple of years later, Uva accepted a job to work at WXVT in Greenville, Miss., which was featured in a “character-driven docu-soap-“type reality show about small local TV stations one year before he came aboard.
It was a huge break. Uva was just getting over his rejection from a station in Aplena, Mich. — media market No. 208.
“The very first job I applied to, the then-sports director was from Waltham, and she was working in Alpena, Mich., which is like the third smallest market in the country, and I couldn't even land that job,” he said. “So I was like, 'If I can't land a job at a small market, how am I going to get in?’”
Being a hard worker helps. As the Globe’s Chad Finn noted in his piece about Uva, the young anchor is seemingly universally liked, a difficult feat in the sometimes cutthroat world of sports media. As a 20-something, Uva would always take photos with whomever he met, and then send them a handwritten note thanking them for their time.
He was a regular at the post office — that’s for sure.
“I wanted to get into the business, because I felt like I didn't want to let them down,” he said. “I wanted to really be able to make their time worthwhile.”
It’s safe to say he’s done that. Before WBZ, Uva was living in Columbia, S.C., and working at Gamecock Central, a subscription service that covers athletics at the University of South Carolina (he’s ecstatic to still be working there while he’s in Boston). Uva’s years down south immersed him in the college football world, and he says many players helped him out, including Marshon Lattimore.
His mural of photographs is now significantly larger than his collection of rejections.
“That wall started off very small,” said Uva. “It was like a picture with Steve Buckley and Steve Burton and Brandon Hall and they'd sign it, and it was the beginning of the journey. Now, that thing, goodness. I probably have 50, 60 pictures on the wall. It tells the story that reminds me of this journey of how many people have helped me.”
———————-
Portnoy vs. Whitlock: It’s nice to see Dave Portnoy spread the hate to both sides of the political isle. The acerbic Barstool Sports founder is involved in a hilarious feud with Jason Whitlock, who’s accusing Portnoy of being a sellout because … he came out as pro-choice and deleted an anti-gambling “comedic video” from some guy named Alex Stein that was shared on Barstool’s Twitter page (Barstool is owned by Penn National Gaming).
It wasn’t long ago when Whitlock and other professional contrarians cited Portnoy as the “most important figure in sports,” which he pointed out.
Whitlock comes across like a small man here — figuratively, of course. Desperate for attention, the formerly respected journalist who now hosts YouTube shows for Glenn Beck’s network is piling on the Portnoy hate. The right co-opted Portnoy for his anti-cancel culture stances, and are now finding out he’s not a fervent ideologue.
As a result, they’re very sad, and their feelings are hurt. Who are the snowflakes, again?
Aqib Talib out of TV: Aqib Talib is involved in another shooting. This time, he allegedly instigated a fight that led to the murder of a youth football coach in Dallas, Texas. It’s suspected that Talib’s brother, Yaqub, pulled the trigger. He turned himself into police last week.
On Monday, Talib announced he was stepping away from his upcoming role on Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football” coverage.
This is the third shooting incident in which Talib has been involved since 2015. While he showed promise in the booth — his energetic and unconventional style is refreshing — people with these kinds of violent rap sheets shouldn’t receive cushy broadcasting jobs. Talib needs to clean up his act, or his media career may be over before it really started.
Patriots preseason ratings down: The Patriots’ first preseason game drew. 10.1 TV rating. Last year, the opener did a 18.7.
There are a couple of possible reasons for the 46 percent decline, with the fact that Belichick didn’t play any starters at the top of the list. But it also could point to some signs of ennui.
The Patriots are a 17-7 team over the last two seasons. This fall, they may have to earn their fans’ undying attention.
