Interview with Bruce Wood - Part One

Here is Part One of my interview with Bruce Wood. Come back tomorrow for Part Two and find out what is Bruce's favorite thing to do in NH and his favorite dessert!

Describe yourself in ONE word...
Interested
(note : after interviewing you I would say the word would be: Interesting!)

Q: Where did you grow up/go to school/and some other interesting facts about yourself?
I grew up in central New Jersey, but hardly the New Jersey of the Sopranos and the New Jersey Turnpike. Home was in Somerset County at the edge of the Watchung Mountains. I’ve always been a bicycle rider and the rolling hills of Somerset Country horse and farm country were where I always gravitated. There and the Jersey Shore.

I went to Upsala College as a math major, graduated as an English major and eventually earned a master’s in journalism at Penn State, a place I love.

Some interesting facts about myself, huh? Let’s see. I rode a bicycle from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean twice, camping the whole way. The stories I can tell ... . It took me 31 days to go from the Seattle area to New York City on my solo first trip. ... I worked the better part of two full years on a moving truck between college and grad school. I got to see a lot of the country working for Bekins and still have my old white jump suit with my name on it. ... I love traveling and have been to 49 states. The only one I’ve missed: Kansas of all places. My kids love to tease me about that. We’ll be going cross country this summer in our ‘84 Volkswagen Westfalia camper bus with 90,000 original miles on it but won't be going through Kansas, dagnabit. (We will be gone June 24-July 21 so the Green Alert will be on hiatus then.)

Tell us about your family.
My wife, Mary, is the diabetes clinical nurse specialist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center with degrees from UNH and Boston University and limitless patience. We have two children, Kelly Anne, 14, and Matt, 12. Both are terrific athletes, big sports fans, diehard Dartmouth supporters and dedicated students. Kelly is the only girl playing junior high baseball in the area (she's her team's fleet-footed starting center-fielder) and Matt is a catcher and leading hitter on the Little League team I coach. The final member of the family is Cooper, a 2-year-old golden retriever.

Q: Where do you live and why?
Etna is a rural area of Hanover ... and we live in a rural area of Etna ;-). Our house is about 1.5 miles up a dirt road (fifth house on the right), high enough on Moose Mountain that we can have six inches of snow when all they get in town is rain, and our flowers bloom a week or two later than they do on campus. It’s a great place to live with miles of wilderness and the Appalachian Trail out our back door and views of five ski areas (Killington, Pico, Ascutney, Okemo and sometimes Stratton Mountain) across the road on a clear day. Why do we live here? We are less than 8 miles from campus but have nine acres of land, total privacy, gorgeous views, complete peace and quiet and easily the best school system in northern New England. Except for mud season it’s about as wonderful a place to live as you could imagine.

Q: Why did you decide to create the Big Green Alert and Blog?
The more years I went without a raise at the newspaper the more I started to wonder what someone with my peculiar skill set could do without leaving such a wonderful area in which to raise my family. It was in February of 2005 that I decided I had to do something. I’ve developed enough contacts at the newspaper that I thought I could make a go of freelancing but wasn’t ready to give up covering Dartmouth football, something I truly enjoy. Green Alert offered me the opportunity to continue doing something I love -- and something I think I’m pretty good at -- while at the same time (hopefully) having a guaranteed income for a defined period of time. So far, so good, although it you knew what I make per hour with Green Alert it would make you cry.

Q: When did it all start?
The Green Alert web site went up last June, just in time for the Dartmouth football golf outing. I left the paper at that point and began posting regularly on it in July.

Q: What else are you doing to make ends meet?
Thanks for asking. I do as much freelance writing as I can scrounge up including stories for out-of-town newspapers, the Associated Press, small magazines, trade publications and the like. I've done a number of contract projects for Dartmouth as well. I've also started a business called Remember When? It's aimed at helping senior citizens share their stories with their descendants. I produce hard-bound Life History books, Oral Histories and DVD Slide Shows. Let's see. What else? I applied to teach journalism at Colby-Sawyer College, a small school about 30 miles from here but nothing has come of that yet. I'm doing some advertising/PR work for an Internet startup helping colleges share digital scouting films online (http://www.ezxchanges.com) and for the Vermont Open pro golf tournament at Lake Morey Country Club.

In a perfect world I'd be able to live up to that slogan, All Dartmouth Football, All the Time, but until I convince someone to take out a nice, expensive ad on the site and drum up some more subscribers (a lot more, actually) I'll be scrambling. If you know of anyone who wants a personal history done, send 'em my way. (I did one oral history over the phone and it turned out pretty good if I say so myself ;-)

Q: How long have you been covering Dartmouth/Ivy Football?
I started at the Valley News after finishing up at Penn State in ‘79. The first two years my coverage pretty much amounted to attending the weekly football luncheon and writing a column out of that. I’ve been heavily involved covering Dartmouth and Ivy football (as well as most Ivy sports) since 1983.

As a Dartmouth football parent, I have to say your blog is fascinating and I know you must spend hours upon hours researching and providing information on everything Dartmouth. Not exactly a question...but feel free to elaborate on your background in paper news and how you've developed networks throughout the country.
I guess it’s one of those deals where if you hang around long enough you get to know a lot of people and if you do right by them they’ll do right by you. I remember one year, for example, Dartmouth was playing Princeton in a winner-take-all game for the Ivy League championship and coaches around the league trusted me enough to give me insights as to how they thought the game would turn out with the caveat that I not use their names. It made for a really interesting story. In 1996 when Dartmouth went undefeated, I was able to talk with former Ivy coaches who had moved on to other leagues about how they thought Dartmouth would have fared if it had been allowed to play in the NCAA playoffs. (For the record, they thought the Big Green would have had a chance to win at least a game or two.) Having a good system of contacts was really helpful when Dartmouth was hiring Coach Lyons and later Coach Teevens, two athletic directors and two basketball coaches. I’ll brag a little and say I got each one of those stories in print before the college released the names. I think the people at the college respected the work I did at the paper, but I know that kind of bugged 'em a little. ;-)

One of the most amazing things about your blog is that you post EVERYDAY on it.. I absolutely love visiting your blog! How is the blog different from the website?
Since February or so it really hasn’t been much different. The Blog is intended to be a place where people can stop by and get a really quick fix of Dartmouth, Dartmouth football and Ivy League football/sports. Obviously it is mostly links at this point. As the season nears the longer “premium” material that I generate (game stories, feature stories, columns, opinions and the always popular Optimist-Pessimist) will migrate back to the regular site where it will be available to paid subscribers. Unfortunately, that’s the only way I can afford to keep doing this. The Blog will revert to being what I call “quick hits.”

Q: How does a person subscribe to the Big Green Alert?
The charge is $50 for the year. I had lots of headaches last year with the subscription process because the automated system didn’t work consistently and I couldn’t afford to gamble and spend the money to have someone design a system that did because I had no idea if anyone would sign up. As we speak I have a very nice, very patient, very (financially) understanding local web developer working on a new site that will not only automate the sign-on procedure, but allow me to take credit cards. Last year I could only take checks through the U.S. mail and that led to all kinds of adventures.

Q: What do you do on pregame/game/post game day that makes your Big Green Alert one of the best sources of information?
First, I spend too much time on the Internet each morning, and I’m at every single practice including double sessions. I talk to people before practice, during practice (not the players during practice – that's a no-no) and after practice. I also spend a lot of time around the gym and football offices. I’m fortunate because in doing what I did for the newspaper for as long as I did, I tried to treat people the right way and they recognize that. As a result, they know that if they tell me something I won’t violate their confidence or use information the wrong way, so I hear things I might not otherwise hear.

You asked specifically about game days. I try to be at the stadium by 10 a.m., or so. I'll schmooze the sports information people, see if I can trade insights with the radio folks, catch up with a few administrators and see if I can glean anything useful from the assistant coaches before the team comes out. Postgame is a scramble because after the press conference I'm trying my darndest to get good information out in a timely matter. I try to have two stories up by 8 p.m., or so, which doesn't leave much time.

Q: What do you see in the upcoming year that excites you about the BIG GREEN Football Team?
Good question. I see a team that has had enough losing. A team that has had a year to acclimate to a new coaching staff and a new system. A team that has had a year working hard to grow bigger and stronger. I see a team that has a good combination of maturity and exciting young talent. I see a team that has the potential to be in every Ivy League game of the year.