A Curator of Passion

Walking into room 301 of the Agriculture Building, one might think the class was just like any other: rowed seating, ink-stained whiteboards, blank stares on blank faces and fall colors on fall clothing. And, from the outside looking in, that may seem to be true. But, if you were to delve deeper into it, you would find something much stronger. You would find passion.

The curator and overseer of that passion stands in front of the room. His name is Professor Ricky Thein. On some days, he may stand and deliver a lecture about the state of modern journalism, and on others he may play the National Anthem to prove a point. The students never really know what to expect, but that’s just fine with the professor. He has created an environment not unlike that of the real world: unpredictable with many different opinions and containing students with different socioeconomic backgrounds.

In the Beginning

Thein was born to an atypical family. His mother is from Argentina and his father is from Austria. His dad moved to Argentina when he was young and ended up meeting his mom. After marrying, they had four children – the third of whom they would name Ricky. A year after his birth. they decided to move to the U.S. in search of a better life.

It was in the U.S. that Thein would develop an interest in sports.

“As soon as I was old enough to walk I loved balls and sports,” Thein said. “That’s all I loved when I was a kid.”

Like many adolescents, being a professional athlete was a main goal for him. He wanted to be a basketball player.

“I played basketball in the driveway every second of the day I could,” Thein said. “That was my goal. Like most people, I realized that wasn’t going to happen, so then I transferred my passion to journalism.”

After high school, things started to move fast for Thein. Mistakes were made, but lessons came from those mistakes.

The Journey

“I graduated high school and I went to the University of Cincinnati, but I majored in business,” Thein said. “Why? I don’t know. I flunked out after two semesters. I decided at that point I needed to get the heck out of Dayton, Ohio and just get on my own.”

So, he packed up his things, left his home and moved down to Orlando, Florida with a friend.

After working in a bagel shop for about five years, he decided getting up at 3 a.m. to make bagels wasn’t for him. It was then he had an epiphany.

“Really what happened was I was watching SportsCenter one day … when I was really trying to figure out my life, and it just hit me,” Thein said. “I saw SportsCenter, I saw these guys dressed up in suits talking sports, and I told myself, ‘I could do that. Why can’t I do that?’”

While at a community college and the University of Central Florida, he began doing just that. He went through an internship at a local TV station for those four years.

“I learned as much as a I could,” he said. “And I did over four years. Then I realized during those four years, ‘this is what I want to do.’ I want to work in local TV sports and be a local sports anchor. And then, that’s what I did.”

Being a sports reporter took Thein out of his comfort zone.

“I was everything,” he said. “When you work in sports in local TV, you are a writer, you are a producer, you are an editor, you are a shooter, you are an anchor, you are a reporter. You do it all. So I did it all.”

Doing it all got him many opportunities. If you were to walk into his Kimpel office, you would see cabinets lined with various awards from different points in his life. It would appear he made the most of those opportunities.

After working as a sports anchor in Southern Illinois for two years, Thein would take his talents to South Beach.

“I had a great opportunity from a guy who I interned for in Orlando,” Thein said. “He called me one day, and he said, ‘Hey, there’s this gig in Miami and they’re hiring, and I told them they should call you. Are you interested?’ and I said ‘Yeah.” So I interviewed, got the job ... and then I went down to Miami, Florida.”

The job was to cover Miami sports. He would do that from 2000 to 2002. When he was sent to Los Angeles to cover the 2002 Rose Bowl between the No. 1 Miami Hurricanes and the No. 2 Nebraska Cornhuskers, that would all come crashing down. After a late flight, Thein had to rush to the open practice he had to cover a few days before the game and was late for the time allotted for journalists to film. But, he needed that video. He went to a side tunnel and get what he needed for his segment. After being caught, he was ultimately fired.

“I did a lot of good work,” Thein said. “I just made a really stupid decision that led to me being fired, and I learned a lot from that.”

Following some self-reflection, he decided that pitfall was not going to stop him from doing what he loved. After an extensive job search, Thein would take a job in his parents retirement community working for its TV station. After six months of that, he would move to Jackson, Mississippi and cover the entire state of Mississippi’s sports teams. It was his first experience with Southeastern Conference schools.

The Change

After two years of running all over Mississippi, he decided to turn his passion towards molding young minds and helping them avoid the mistakes he and many other journalists make in the sports world.

“I never really made it big,” Thein said. “Everybody’s dream is to make it to ESPN. That didn’t happen and wasn’t looking like it was going to happen. I also really lost interest in working for ESPN because I didn’t like ESPN that much anymore. I used to love it, but ESPN changed a lot during my (years in the business), from 1997 to 2009. I didn’t like the way sports journalism was heading, and I thought I could do more good by teaching it instead of doing it.”

But, you can’t teach without a master’s degree. So, like many of the challenges he had already come across, he faced that head on. He got the degree and started his first teaching job at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. He taught sports writing and broadcasting.

“Looking back on it, it was probably a horrible, horrible job I did, but at least I got in front of people and I got to teach,” he said. “And I wanted to see if I liked it and I did, I loved it. So that first year at Bradley that was real teaching at a real university with real students. I was pretty bad my first couple of years. I’d learned a lot, but I made a lot of rookie mistakes, like all rookies do. But it was a great experience. I loved it. I loved every minute of it, and I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

After three years at Bradley, he would take a tenure-track position at Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas in 2012. He realized there small schools weren’t for him. ESPN often travels to schools and allows students at those schools to shadow and gain experience in broadcasting, but ESPN doesn’t go to Baldwin City, Thein said.

“I just could offer them nothing outside of just the classroom experience,” Thein said. “And I know they needed more than that. They needed real world experience. And there was just nothing to offer them there. So I wanted to go to a place where I could offer them real world experience. And I figured an SEC school this big, there’s got to be opportunities here to do more than there was at Baker. So, that’s why I came here.”

He took the job at the UofA in the fall of 2012 and decided he may finally be ready to stop moving around, he said.

“I like my classes,” Thein said. “I like my colleagues. I like my department. I like everything about this job, so I have no intentions of leaving. If they’ll have me here, I see myself staying here for a while.”

Resurrecting an Old Profession

As for the condition of journalism, Thein said its current state is untenable.

“I think it’s going to get worse and worse and worse,” he said. “I’m hoping at some point we hit rock bottom and we all realize ‘What are we doing?’ This is so stupid what we’re doing right now, that we’re trying to appeal to people who only want ridiculous sports content.”

His favorite examples of ridiculous sports content are Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith. These TV personalities are famous for their “embrace debate” style that is often as inflammatory as it is inane and meaningless, he said.

He believed he had two choices to try and change that. One was to either change the industry from within, and the other was to teach the younger generation to be better than what is currently happening.

“You don’t need to go to college to learn how to be ridiculous,” Thein said. “Anybody can just be ridiculous. You go to college to learn how to do good work, and how to be ethical, and how to care about what you’re doing, and how to make sure what you’re doing is accurate and correct and to be proud of the work you do. So that’s what I’m trying to instill in my students.”

Thein doesn’t just teach as a quest to save journalism, however. He said he really cares about his students’ ability to be ethical in the real world. Journalism skills are useful outside of a publication. Working with deadlines, learning to write well and making ethical decisions are all things that will affect people in everyday life.

“Some people will pick it up, some don’t,” he said. “Some care, some don’t. But the skills I teach I think transfer to any industry and the ones who care and the ones who listen – not just to me but all of their teachers – I think they’re going to have a better chance at being successful early in life rather than late like I was.”

Thein has found a career path that is rewarding to him: teaching kids how to avoid the mistakes he made going down their same path.

“Sharing knowledge with young people is enjoyable,” he said. “Watching young people learn and grow is enjoyable. When you see that light bulb go on in their head when they finally get something that you’ve been trying to tell them, that is a joy.”