Mike DeCourcy living his dream job as a sports journalist

by Elliott Inscho, Shaler Area HS

The North Carolina Tar Heels hold the record for most Final Four appearances (21) since their NCAA tournament debut in 1941. The Tar Heels have a lot of work to catch up to sportswriter and Pittsburgh native Mike DeCourcy.

DeCourcy is a writer for The Sporting News and a television analyst for Big Ten Network and Fox Sports. He has covered 35 Final Fours over the course of his journalism career. It’s something that he’s always known that he wanted to do.

“I knew I wanted to be in sports coverage. I knew I wanted to do that when I was in fourth grade. I had no doubt. That was what I was going to be,” DeCourcy said. “Lots of teachers that I had said, ‘don’t you want to do something better than that?’ I don’t know why they thought that wasn’t good enough.”

After graduating from Elizabeth Forward High School, DeCourcy attended Point Park University to study journalism. He was initially set on attending Penn State. Ironically, it was while reading a newspaper that his path would change.

“I was going to go to Penn State. My sister had gone there, and I went up a couple of times. I fell in love with the campus,” DeCourcy said. “I was working a summer job and had a little bit of downtime, the McKeesport Daily News was sitting there in the break room, and I was thumbing through and saw something about a journalism scholarship to Point Park. I thought ‘I’ll apply, why not?’”

He didn’t hear back and assumed he had not been selected until a trip to a college fair.

“I was in a class that went on a field trip to a college fair,” DeCourcy said. “I didn’t have anything to do because I knew where I was going. I went by the Point Park table, and said, ‘whoever won that scholarship?’ The guy there said he didn’t know, but he asked me what my name was. Literally that night, my phone rings and it’s the chair of the journalism and communications department at Point Park.”

DeCourcy won the scholarship, but he wasn’t sold on Point Park. After visiting Ohio University, a conversation with his father put things in perspective.

“My dad said eight words that changed my life. He said ‘how are you going to pay for it?’ He wasn’t saying he wouldn’t help me, but I knew right away what he was saying was, ‘What kind of idiot walks away from free college?’” DeCourcy said.

As it turned out, Point Park was the right choice in part because of the opportunities it provided.

“I got involved in the student radio station, which was huge for me because it really helped me learn how to be on air and how to present myself,” DeCourcy said. “I used the proximity of living where I did to cover high school sports for a small paper, the Monongahela Daily Herald, for two and a half, three years. I got lots of practice writing, talking to players and coaches, building relationships. I got all that from sticking around at Point Park.”

After graduation, DeCourcy received an offer to work at a local newspaper. It did not go well for him, but it opened his eyes to the faults in his performance.

“The Tribune Review was starting a second edition that would cover the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh,” DeCourcy said. “They wanted to cover the Pirates on a daily basis. I got the job, and got fired because I was terrible at it. It taught me a huge lesson. I realized I wasn’t working hard enough. When I got the jobs that I got, I was getting good breaks and I wasn’t working hard enough.”

DeCourcy adopted the idea he needed to work harder if he wanted to be successful and has stuck to it throughout his career.

“I said, ‘that’s not happening again. I’m going to work my tail off.’ And I have been for more than 40 years,” DeCourcy said. “Never have I taken my eye off the ball. Never have I said, ‘I’ve done enough.’”

The next year, he got the opportunity to work at the Pittsburgh Press. There, he covered high school sports and auto racing which also helped him grow.

“I can barely put gas in my car. I covered the Indianapolis 500 once. They made me learn how to ask the questions of people about a sport I didn’t know or didn’t understand that well, and I had to learn it,” DeCourcy said.

DeCourcy would get the chance to cover basketball in 1987. He covered Duquesne and Pitt men’s basketball until the Pittsburgh Press went out of business in 1992. DeCourcy was back to square one.

“I applied to every paper in the country that was big enough to get a Final Four credential. I applied to every single one. I got one chance,” he said.

That chance was in Memphis, Tennessee. He stayed in Memphis for four years until he received an opportunity to move to a newspaper in Cincinnati where he covered the Cincinnati Bearcats and other basketball events for another four years until his current position became open.

“The Sporting News, as a full time opportunity, came open to me,” DeCourcy said. “And I’ve been there for 25 years.”

In addition to his role at The Sporting News, DeCourcy also serves as a studio analyst for the Big Ten Network and a bracket analyst for Fox Sports. There, he gets to work alongside some of the best basketball players ever.

“I sit there sometimes and I laugh to myself,” DeCourcy said. “I’m a studio analyst, and among the people that I have worked with over the years are Jimmy Jackson, who was a first team All-American and a 15 year NBA pro, Robbie Hummel, one of the greatest players in the history of Purdue basketball, Rapheal Davis, who is defensive player of the year in the Big Ten, John Beilein, who won over 800 games and made the national championship game twice. And then there’s me, who played intramural basketball at Point Park College.”

While he primarily covers college basketball, he has travelled the world covering soccer. One of the most notable moments in his career came while covering the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

“When Neymar scored the opening goal of the 2014 World Cup for Brazil, I could see fireworks going off in the distance,” DeCourcy said. “They were setting off fireworks in the various neighborhoods of Sao Paulo because Brazil had scored a goal. I will forever think of that moment as the best moment of my career. It was just breathtaking to be able to be in that place at that time and see that sight.”

Over the course of 40 years, much has changed in the journalism world.

“I couldn’t have imagined any of the things that I’ve done just about because most of them didn’t exist. When I left college, there was no all day sports talk,” DeCourcy said. “I tell people that I have three dream jobs. Jobs that (when I was in school) I would have thought that’s the greatest thing ever, but none of them even existed (then). The Sporting News will celebrate our 140th birthday as a publication in March of 2025. It began as a as a newsprint publication. We transitioned to magazine around 1996 or 97, and then we went completely out of publishing the magazine in 2012, and we are now entirely online.”

In the past, a journalist could pick one field, like writing, television, or talking on the radio, and master it. Now, journalists like DeCourcy are forced to be well-rounded and work on many platforms.

Not many sports journalists can say they’ve had a career like DeCourcy has. His success was recognized in 2012, when he was inducted into the United States Basketball Writers Hall of Fame.

“I’m not saying I’m the greatest sportswriter ever, but I’ve had a career way beyond my dreams,” DeCourcy said. “Everybody’s story is going to be a little bit different, but whatever it is you do, embrace where you are and embrace what it has to offer.”

This content has been submitted by authors outside of this publisher and is not its editorial product. It could contain opinions, facts, and points of view that have not been reviewed or accepted by the publisher.