From Small Town to Big Field

By: Kate Norum

Oxford, Mississippi, the home of Ole Miss and the place Sudu Upadhyay grew up, becoming more and more invested in sports from a young age. Aside from playing, Upadhyay was more intrigued with sports on the other side dealing with the aspect of talking about them and relating that to the game. At a young age, he knew he wanted to do something centered around communication, and sports was something that was always lingering around him. He actually began preparing for a career in this industry, while still in high school. After creating a website and putting out content that dealt with various sports, mainly football, Upadhyay then began writing for his high school newspaper and also started a TV program there. In his sophomore year of high school, Upadhyay actually started interning with the Ole Miss Athletic Department through connections by way of his father and began thriving more in this environment. The process became much more within grasp as he continually made strides to get noticed and made sure to utilize all the resources available to him, even to this day, where he is still making strides to grow even more in this field.
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K: What made you want to go into the sports media field?

I was always talking about sports with friends and family. They would all tell me, “you’re like good at this” whenever I would talk about football or basketball. Football and basketball were the two sports I mostly followed. Around 7th or 8th grade, I figured out what I wanted to do from a career aptitude test, where it showed that communication was a strong suit of mine. That was the moment that started it all. Going into high school, I launched my own website of YouTube videos on football games. 

K: Tell me more about your website creation and the YouTube videos.

Ok, so I really started it as a joke, making YouTube videos just for pure entertainment and getting more out there in terms of Ole Miss football. I had a camera and a green screen. I was technologically advanced with all the equipment to edit, produce, and writing the scripts for all of my own videos. From there I worked for my high school’s newspaper and it pretty much started really taking off after I started a TV program at my high school. I would say what ever I really wanted to do, I was able to. 

K: Has there been any setbacks for you in terms of reaching your goal of sports broadcasting?

The work itself was never hard for me. Writing, reporting, shooting, that stuff never really bothered me. I think the more you move into it, there’s other factors. I mean you’re not always a reporter. I don’t know about a lot of kids but I’m sure some kids, like me, got really lucky, and some might say privileged. I got started at such a young age where I was around grown-ups and knew kind of how they operated and their dynamic. I remember when I was in college at Ole Miss, I treated my professors, like they were my friends almost. All because I knew how to talk and be around grown-ups. They trusted me.

K: Where was your first job in this business?

My first job was at WMC in Memphis, straight out of college, which everyone was like, “that’s such a great market to start out in.” I always found myself maybe trying to do a lot more than I was allowed to do or didn’t have the resources to do them. I think I got frustrated early on because people usually would have just given me stuff and expected me to come up with something. Once I got to this job, I realized there’s a certain process you just have to go through. You can’t just step ahead, just because you’ve been better in the past. Everyone is on the same level, and just have to go along with whatever is happening. You can’t necessarily change or control things. That was definitely the toughest time for me to just take a step back.

K:What was the moment that everything changed for you in this field?

I would say the moment when I started interning with Ole Miss Athletics while I was still in high school. My dad was the biggest reason I got that opportunity. He worked for a department on campus prior to the athletic department getting a video department. They were housed in the same building, just about. Around 9th or 10th grade, my dad got me in touch with a friend of his, where he would say something along the lines of “ hey, my kid makes videos, he’s obsessed with sports and loves Ole Miss, is there any way he could get involved?” J. Stern, an old-fashioned guy, gave me a shot and put me in the control room watching everything that goes down on the field. He (Stern) let me venture out and go to the video board, and run equipment out to the shooter and that was the moment that it all became real for me.

Some people know exactly what they want to do at a young age, just like Sudu. The willingness to keep progressing in this field despite what may be planned or not is really the beauty of it all. Being able to create something from nothing is a huge step towards building that overall mindset to keep moving, especially for a guy from the small town of Oxford, Mississippi, with every coming day bringing him closer to his goals of constantly improving in this field.

Back in January 2020, Upadahyay left Memphis and WMC. He moved to Atlanta where he will start his next journey with the Atlanta Falcons, starting July 2020, as a multimedia journalist.

Thank you to Sudu for sharing your story and to motivate others to keep going no matter the circumstance. 

You can follow Sudu on Twitter: @SuduUpadhyay or Connect with him onLinkedIn

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