Troy Renck Interview
Beat Exploration
As a young kid, watching the Denver Broncos spring training practice was the highlight of my life. Little did I know, the memories of me sitting in my mothers lap and watching them play was the start to an unbreakable bond between the sport of football and I. As I started playing football, I realized that I really understood the game and could write about it nearly as well as I could explain it. That opened my eyes to the idea of putting my input of the game of football on paper professionally one day.
For my beat exploration, I thought of no better opportunity to take a deeper look into the world of sports-journalism and was lucky enough to get an interview with the lead analyst of Denver7 Sunday, Troy Renck. I wanted to write about Troy because when I read about him beforehand, it seemed as if we had very similar interests. He has a very impressive track record as a journalist with over 20 years under his belt. Between his track record and me being a lifelong Broncos fan, I couldn’t think of anyone better to interview.
Mr. Renck had no hesitation when responding to my interview offer, to my surprise. In the 30 minute time frame we had to talk, I got to ask him a few questions about his career and see what it was like through the eyes of the Denver Broncos lead reporter.
Troy Renck grew up as an avid sports enthusiast, playing sports and reading his fair share of Sports Illustrated issues, he played sports with his twin brother while their Dad would be coaching their team. But as much as he loved sports he loved to write. Starting my interview, I asked him how he got his introduction to journalism, he said “To be completely honest with you, I knew what I wanted to do when I was really young, I was the editor for my school paper my sophomore year through senior year. So by the time I got to CU, I was bent on being a professional in journalism”
This is when Troy started freelancing his journalism talent to The Card of Daily to be the lead reporter for the Colorado Buffaloes football team from ‘89-to-‘93. From that point forward Troy has been a full time sports writer, spending time in Arizona for one year then coming back to Colorado to cover the Rockies and now Broncos. Starting his full time career in 1996 as he is still active today.
“What is the daily life like of the sportswriter for the Broncos?
“The process is different for football and baseball, for football there is only one game a week as you know but for baseball I was doing about 170 games a year, with spring training. So it is much more driven on game coverage, football is driven on previews and the breakdowns because it’s once a week”
“When you are in the room with other reporters. How many people are there with you? Do you always get to ask questions?”
“For football there are about 35 people in there at one time so if you are looking for a one on one. For example, if you catch them at a good time on Monday, you should ask if you guys can talk on Friday” he explained that while it is busy,respecting their time and space usually gets you those daily question opportunities.
“Do you have any plans on expanding your journalistic practices or do you plan on doing more different journalism in the future.?”
“Yeah, for now I’m busy. I have a podcast on The Fan radio station, I write online and I do Tv reports five-to-seven days a week”
As I wrapped up the interview with Mr. Renck, I asked him what advice he has to me or any other young sportswriters.
“You have to love everything, not just sports,” he said. He explained that in order to write about something you must love writing as much as you love what you are writing about. Have a fiery passion for it. He told me how important it is to know what you are talking about, you need to be clean and precise with what you’re saying but it should be objectively correct, you should allow people to learn from you because you have a direct way of getting information from the players.
Interviewing Troy Renck was an awesome experience, you can tell how much he loves sports and writing. I learned about the daily life of a big sportswriter, what that looks like. He stated to me that being a reporter is half reporting and half getting yourself out there. He said small talk is very important for his line of work, people have to be comfortable talking to him or else he can not do his job.
I had a 30 minute conversation with Mr. Renck because of how much detail was in his answers, every response he gave me was filled with passion. As someone who’s life once revolved around football, talking to someone whose life actively revolves around football felt a little reminiscent. He was super easy to talk to as there was a portion of the interview where we had stopped talking about questions and ended up talking about the ins and outs of the Broncos. I believe I had a successful beat exploration as I loved every minute talking to Mr. Renck about the world of professional sports writing.
