By. Pat Tintle
Sports Editor
He may be a New York City columnist residing in the tri-state area, but Mike Vaccaro does not forget the roots that enabled him to grow into an award-winning sportswriter.
A 1989 graduate of St. Bonaventure, Vaccaro returned to the enchanted mountains this week as he participated in the 2015 Dick Joyce Symposium on April 14. Vaccaro was a panelist for the workshop How College Media Should Cover Sports on Campus.
While he is the lead sports columnist for the New York Post, Vaccaro started his career as the Bonnies men’s basketball beat writer for the Olean Times Herald. Vaccaro also served for the Kansas City Star, The Star-Ledger (New Jersey) and was the sports editor for the Northwest Arkansas Times. The scribe also chronicled the famous early 2000s rivalry between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox in his book “Emperors and Idiots: The Hundred Year Rivalry between the Yankees and Red Sox, From the Very Beginning to the End of the Curse.”
However, it was on the St. Bonaventure campus where Vaccaro credits the genesis of his motivation and journalistic education.
“Dr. (Russell J.) Jandoli was a huge influence in my life,” Vaccaro said. “I only had him for class once, but he was a guy who really took an interest in me here, and his various advices were things that I still think about; the ethics he would preach and being tough but fair.”
Journalistic ethics were one of the most important focuses of his education, Vaccaro said.
“In a time like 2015, it’s all 24/7 and ‘when can you get it to me’ and ‘how can you get it to me’,” Vaccaro said. “It’s important to stay grounded a little bit in terms of the ethics and the fairness of it all. Those are things I draw upon.”
St. Bonaventure was not only where Vaccaro began his sportswriting career, but it was also the place where he grew as a person.
“I lived in (Devereaux Hall) for three years,” Vaccaro said. “Just walking by that old relic brings back a lot of memories. And being in Murphy, that’s where our newspaper office was back in my freshman and sophomore year.”
An alumnus of The Bona Venture himself, Vaccaro learned the ins and outs of the journalism business by taking advantage of campus media when he was a college student.
“The BV was the best experience that I’ve had in terms of building blocks,” Vaccaro said. “At the Olean Times Herald, I used to be responsible for God knows how many soccer, volleyball or football scores coming in by myself, having to get those in quickly and write accurately. The other thing is the time that I spent at The BV where I did just about everything; I took pictures, I wrote stories. There wasn’t a Wednesday night that went by at my time here that I didn’t stay to five, six, seven in the morning because we’re putting the paper out and getting to bed and eating bad pizza.”
However, one of Vaccaro’s reasons for returning to Bonaventure was to communicate with the contemporary Bonnie. Although he graduated more than 20 years ago, Vaccaro has remembered one key lesson from his days wearing the brown and white.
“If you had asked me when I was twelve years old ‘What job do you want when you grow up?’ I would have said ‘I want to be the sports columnist for the New York Post’,” Vaccaro said. “That happened. It’s probably fantasy land to say that can happen to anybody—whatever your dream job is—but the decision for that to happen to you should be your own. As long as you’re willing to work hard and as long as you’re willing to dream
