There have been several long-lasting relationships formed over the 50-year history of WJPZ, and today we look at a special one - Alex Brewer ('12) and Molly Nelson ('14).
Two avid sports fans, from Maine and West Virginia, respectively, both came to Syracuse for the student media capabilities. When Molly arrived, Alex was already two years in, and she developed a crush. A future ESPN employee who didn't need help with her fantasy lineup, she nonetheless asked Alex for his help. At the time, he didn't realize she had ulterior motives.
Alex was General Manager when the station's expansion and renovation started. And Molly, who was was also the assistant general manger of Citrus TV, was there to see the project through. Both guests talk about how proud they are of that accomplishment and how it served them well in their Emmy-winning careers.
Molly and Alex both ended up at ESPN - Molly working on everything from the Australian Open to the launch of the ACC Network. Alex worked on everything from NASCAR coverage to College Gameday. Alex tells a great story of being at Ole Miss when they knocked off Alabama.
For Molly, she was quarterbacking the logistics of the ESPN team being in Greensboro, North Carolina, to cover the men's and women's ACC tournaments....in March of 2020. While most of us were returning from Syracuse unscathed, Molly all of a sudden had to coordinate getting the entire team back to Connecticut. She continued this work helping run SportsCenter with a skeleton crew, some remote, in the earliest, scary days of the pandemic.
In 2017, this Mainer and West Virginian got married - but in neither of their hometowns. They brough their friends and family back to campus, got married at Hendricks Chapel, and had their reception at Dinosaur Barbecue. (Yes, Otto joined). And while Molly and the girls were doing hair and makeup, Alex and the guys were right back where it all started -on the air at Z89, on his wedding day. We have a clip.
The pull to the 315 was always strong with today's guests. When they wanted a change, Alex got a remote job, at Chess.com, which freed them up to go anywhere. Soon, Molly landed a gig at Sidearm Sports in Syracuse, and they returned to the Salt City.
Join Us in Syracuse for Banquet on March 4th: https://bit.ly/WJPZ50BanquetTickets
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast is produced by Jon Gay '02 and JAG in Detroit Podcasts
JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. There have been a number of love stories at WJPZ over half a century. We can all name several couples, probably off the top of our heads that have gotten together in some part, at least due to the radio station. So I wanna feature a couple on the podcast, and the couple that I have today has had great careers in their less than a decade since they got out.
Molly Nelson and Alex Brewer from the classes of 20. Let mt get this right. 12 for Alex. 14 for Molly, right? That's right. Welcome to the podcast.
Alex: Thank you. We are, thanks for having us pumped to be here. Jag, it's an awesome initiative that you're doing.
JAG: Thank you. First let's start how each of you got to Syracuse. Alex, we'll start with you.
Alex: My story is a little unconventional. I always knew I wanted to work in sports media. I was a huge Boston sports fan growing up in Maine. All my life. I was pretty intent on the University of Vermont towards the latter time of my time in high school. But my advisor was like you really like sports media and this is what you want to do.
Syracuse is a cool school. You should check it out. I'm like, okay. So I blindly applied to Syracuse. I got in, which I was super lucky to get in. I go to the admitted students day. I realized that day that I'm in VPA I'm not in Newhouse. I didn't know there was a difference because I just clicked a dropdown menu and I clicked communication and rhetorical studies ended up sticking with that major, loved that major. I minored in Newhouse. But my journey to Syracuse was essentially my advisor saying You should. Blindly applied. And once I visited the campus, I fell in love immediately. I canceled my trip to Ithaca College. We turned in my deposit pretty shortly after and the rest was history.
JAG: That is really cool. Now, Molly, being from West Virginia, I can't imagine a lot of other people from your home state attended Syracuse?
Molly: I did not. I was definitely a traitor. We were in the Big East at the time that I applied to Syracuse. Playing West Virginia regularly.
But my immediate family moved to West Virginia when my parents were pregnant with me actually. My parents just never really had an affinity to West Virginia schools, like most other people around me did. So they were very encouraging to like, look outside the state and explore my options.
And I knew probably by the time I was a sophomore in high school that I wanted to go into journalism in some way. So obviously Syracuse, Newhouse was top of the list and I visited a couple schools as a junior. And actually same as Alex canceled my meeting to Ithaca after I went to Syracuse. RIP Ithaca.
Was like, don't need to go. Syracuse is number one. I applied early decision to Newhouse and got in my senior year. Like best email I've ever received in my life. And I always joke to everyone that I was just like the Token West Virginian, that Newhouse needed to check off their boxes. I still, to this day, I don't know how I made it in, but yeah, loved Syracuse.
Like from the second I saw it and obviously it led me to my husband and many best friends. Happy I made that choice.
JAG: And your dog that I hear in the background, which is all good. Molly, let me also ask you how you got involved with the station. You did the TV station as well. How did you come to WJPZ?
Molly: I think there was like a club fair the first week or two of school, and I went and signed up for both the Citrus and Z info session. Again, since I knew I wanted to go into sports media in some way, I wanted any opportunities that would give me a leg up. So I started off at Citrus and ended up using Z more for fun, doing like music, DJ shifts rather than sports.
There I focused my sports stuff more at Citrus, but both I felt, gave me good experience on air, which is what I was interested in originally, and then ended up shifting my interest more towards production as my time at Syracuse progressed.
JAG: Alex, how did you get involved at the radio station? ,
Alex: I was an immediate club hunter for the radio station. When I got onto campus , once I figured out what Syracuse had to offer, after I got in, I basically directly locked in on Z. The first person I met at the station was Alex Silverman. I started as a board op for Friday Night Football in my quest to be the next Mike Francesa, Sports Talk Radio.
There's a lot of wide-eyed students who walk in and want to be on sports talk radio or play by play.
JAG: You're a Boston sports fan and the first sportscaster you mentioned is a New Yorker. Ugh. All right.
Alex: Going to Syracuse, WFAN has a lot of influence around the people that come there but yeah, so I started out producing Friday night football.
I started working on getting cleared for the sports desk. It took me a while to get cleared. But once I got into the sports staff that following year I started to be more on air. So I'd say like my freshman year was a little lighter, even though I was very involved and wanted to be involved. And then basically starting my sophomore year, I joke but it's not really a joke.
My major at college was WJPZ, and then CRS. From then on out where I met obviously a ton of wonderful people, I got involved on the music staff. I got involved on the executive. And then from there I went on to GM and then went on to Station Advisor. Obviously I've been very thankful for a lot of the things I did there.
But yeah, my origin story was within a week of me being at college. I was like, how do I join the radio station?
JAG: That's awesome. And I think, throughout talking about 50 years of the radio station's history, we have seen so many folks tell similar stories. And I love your line about majoring in JPZ because I feel the same way and so many of us have.
All right, next obvious question. How did you two meet and get to know each other?
Molly: Okay. So actually Alex was the person at the Z info session. He was GM when I was a freshman. So when I met him I was like, my gosh, I should join the radio station too, and not just the TV station. I definitely was immediately smitten and had a crush on him, ah, for a very long time before he realized it.
And we started dating officially the fall of my sophomore year and fall of his senior year.
Alex: She would ask me fantasy football advice. It was her way.
Molly: I was trying to flirt. You helped me set my line up. Even though I wanna work in sports media, I know how to set my line up..that was very obvious.
Alex: At the time I was on a sports talk show that was fantasy focused.
So from my perspective, I was like, oh I'm the anointed expert. Of course people are gonna ask me questions. Very naive to to the origins of that. But yeah, everything worked out.
JAG: Typical guy, you, we don't pick up on these things, Molly. Sometimes you just get, take a sledgehammer and hit us over the head with it to let us know you're interested.
Molly: I am literally like trying to work at ESPN. I know how to set my lineup. This is just an excuse to talk to you, but. It took a long time for him to realize that.
JAG: And then he did realize it eventually.
Molly: Yes, it worked out. He still does gimme fantasy football advice though. Is it good advice? I don't know. My teams are not doing fair
Alex: Okay. But to be fair, people messaged you after I advised on your draft wow, Molly killed it in the draft.
Molly: I did get a good draft grade. It hasn't worked out well.
Alex: Yeah, but you know how it is.
JAG: Alex, you graduate two years earlier than Molly. So tell me first about your career once you got out of Syracuse.
Alex: Yeah. JPZ gave me my first job. I worked for Kevin Rich in Albany at Town Square Media as a sales rep for WGNA. Now the other stations, the ESPN radio affiliate, and as I'm sure a lot of people have gone through when they go through the WJPZ system, it's so awesome to have those connections. Kevin Rich at that time was a good friend of mine as well.
We talked about the job initially at the I'm gonna mention it but also it's tragic, the Elite 8 game between Syracuse and Ohio State in Boson. I was there with JPZ for coverage. Kevin Rich was there as well, amongst other people. But that was actually when we really started talking about me getting a job in radio.
So I was super thrilled to have that opportunity right outta college. And I was there for a little under a year, and then I got an opportunity to transition into TV and Nickelodeon in the City. So I did that for a little under a year, and then I finally got my way in the door at ESPN through a series of connections.
Molly was a part of that. Cuz she was an intern. I had some prior connections. So getting to ESPN was a tag team, effort, across all kinds of colleagues, friends and my wife, which was just cool.
JAG: So Molly, you're two years behind him. You're interning there, you're helping him get in the door.
I love this idea because I think back to my time, I was class of 2002, Josh Wolff was the year behind me in '03, and he helped me get a few different radio jobs of the course of my career. But at this point, you're still a student and you're helping Alex out.
Molly: I think I was just very lucky to get the internship summer of 2013 at ESPN in the production program.
And when I got to the end of the internship in August and I was meeting with a few people, figuring out my best plans to stay in touch and be able to apply after graduation. One person I was meeting with who was the head of the production program at the time was like, why are you so stressed out? You did a great job this summer we want you back.
And I literally said to her I know a lot of other people who have been applying for years to work here and never even get an interview. So I don't wanna go back into the pool of just like general Syracuse people trying to apply for a job at ESPN after graduation.
And she asked do you think there are people who are qualified to work here who aren't getting interviews? And I said, yes. And I gave her a list with Alex on it, several others as well. So it was more my own internal stress about being able to stay in touch and circle it back after graduation that somehow ended up getting Alex a little bit higher on the list. I think
Alex: I do wanna shout out one person too, though. Bettina Shore, if you ever listen to this, you just deserve a lot of credit too. She worked at Citrus TV. She wasn't very active at Z, but she worked at ESPN at the time in event production.
We had known each other for a while and she was very instrumental as well with at least getting me in the right doors.
JAG: So share this episode of the podcast with her when it comes. And just so we're clear, you're actually dating at this point. This isn't Molly, still trying to impress you, like asking for fantasy football advice and by trying to get you in the door at ESPN, you're actually together at this point.
Molly: Yes. I was very honest about that. The email gotta put it all out there so HR knows, but they were aware.
Alex: That still doesn't stop the weird rumors that started going around because the order of operations was, I started at ESPN six months before he Molly started officially as not an intern, but full-time in studio production. So I obviously knew the Room of PAs and I worked on highlights for SportsCenter, for NASCAR and other things at the time. So Molly comes in the door and people are like, wow, you are really friendly with Molly. That was really fast. What is happening? This has been going on for a while. We're just super, super duper lucky to be working at the same spot. And we got there independently, but also with some help
JAG: You guys have both done some really cool things at ESPN being so passionate about sports and getting to work at the worldwide leader. I'll start with you, Molly. What are some of the positions you held and things you did with ESPN?
Molly: Yep. So when I was interning, I was in highlights the entire summer which was just a really incredible experience to get to understand the process of getting assigned one game, that it becomes your entire shift and cutting multiple versions of highlights depending on which show it was gonna air on. You write the shot sheets for the talent.
So when you see the highlight air on Sports Center and hear the talent say the words you put down on paper, that was at the time what I thought would be the most incredible thing. When I came back to work for ESPN full-time, I worked my way over to the tennis group. I've been a big tennis fan my whole life.
I played and taught tennis growing up. So I was lucky enough to be able to travel to three out of the four grand slams with that group. And see the Australian Open in Melbourne, Wimbledon in London, and then the US open in New York.
JAG: I was gonna ask which one you were missing. Okay. I would've guessed Australia You'd be missing, but No. Okay.
Molly: So the French Open, the rights switched over to mostly NBC and Tennis Channel right around the time I joined. So I never got to work that one, but that was an incredible experience. And then I ended up moving out of production, which is why I no longer worked on tennis. Then I moved to more of a coordinator role.
And through that coordinator position, I ended up working on the ACC Network launch in 2019, which was amazing. As someone who is now at an ACC school, to be able to launch the network that so much Syracuse content was going to run on and get to, just work with all the different schools in the conference at that point, to launch the network was really incredible.
And to travel I got to do a show at Syracuse for a basketball game that year. So it just really felt like full circle to be a part of that network before I ended up leaving for another opportunity a couple years later.
JAG: What goes into creating a network like that? What were some of the things you were responsible for?
Molly: They had the plans in the works for a while before I started. I got pulled in around July, and it was launching in August. And I just was very lucky. Some of the people I'd worked with on tennis and in other areas were launching it, and they wanted me to be a part of it. So when I picked up, a lot of the talent had already been hired and a lot of the staff had already been identified, but it was getting people onboarded, helping them book their travel to get to Bristol, I had to corral all the mascots from the conference, the day of launch, like walking around campus. So the launch itself, there were just a lot of like logistical travel. Does this person have a badge to get on campus? Has this person done their HR benefits? This person needs an iPad to watch games.
A lot of things like that. And then once we got everything up and running and got our shows, I like to describe the coordinator role is everything that the production staff needs in order to do their job without having to think about anything else. That's my job. So when we would travel, that'd be creating the hotel room blocks, sending out information when they need to arrive, how they're getting from pointing to point B, props, just like anything you could think of that needs to happen behind the scenes logistically, or a schedule or whatever.
And that way the producer and the talent can hopefully just show up and focus on the content and everything else has been handled.
JAG: Gotcha. And Alex, more about your time at ESPN?
Alex: I started there in the highlights unit, much like most PAs do. I quickly was introduced to the NASCAR NOW team. At the time, ESPN was in the final year of their deal with NASCAR as one of the rights holders.
And I had been watching NASCAR for a long time. I was an expert, I guess you could say, compared to the room of people who don't watch NASCAR. So I was very fortunate to hook up with that team pretty early on where, for SportsCenter I was doing the highlights for the Daytona 500 and the biggest races of the year.
And that NASCAR now was a daily studio show. That studio show went away about mid-year due to the rights deal not being renewed, as things happen in TV. That freed me up to go back into, I guess what you'd consider the general pool of PAs. And I had the next fortunate event happen where I was selected to work on College Gameday for that season.
If I'm getting my years, right? It was 2014, right? Yep. I think it is. So on College Gameday, my biggest memory was the Alabama-Ole Miss game. That Gameday, Katy Perry was the guest. Gameday had not been to Ole Miss for either it was the first time, or it had been a long time. I think it was the first time at the time, and so having Katy Perry there on site was chaos.
I have no disrespect to Syracuse, but I have never seen a college football fan base or tailgate scene quite like Ole Miss. It is unbelievable. Tents. Fountains. Chick-fil-A catering up and down, it's insane. But that also happened to be the day where Ole Miss upset Alabama and tore down the goalposts.
And I was on the sideline for that. And Molly's making sure I'm alive and she's seeing the stampede of people marching.
Molly: God, I'm on the field and I'm like watching. I'm like, there's tearing things down!
Alex: It was a wild day. But. I think if I'm gonna name any day at ESPN, that was the craziest and most memorable it was that day.
It's not close. That experience was insane and that was the first year of the college football playoff. So there were a lot of firsts going on that season that I was a part of, but I credit WJPZ and my experience as GM and Exec Board as part of what kind of informed my career as Molly described, being the person that does the things for creatives to allow the creatives do the things that they do.
I also figured that out, I'd say, halfway through my college life. So that eventually applied to Syracuse. I moved over as a production coordinator for the features group. Which if you watch any College Gameday episode or SportsCenter episode, those six and nine-minute feature stories that get told about players and things of that nature.
I was the person that helped get everything in place for them to be able to do those shows. So book edit time, travel, handle budgets, handle rights agreements, et cetera. So I did that for a couple years. That was awesome. I got to be a part of several Emmy award-winning teams, which is really special and cool to be a part of.
JAG: I was going to ask, it's a little dark in your room cuz we're only doing audio only. You don't have your Ring Light on, but are those Emmys on the shelf behind you and what are they for?
Alex: They are. So one of them is for me, one of them is for Molly. Molly is also a sports Emmy winner. In total. Oh no. I'm gonna sound so arrogant here. In total. How many do I have? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Yeah. I have five. Yes, because one's at my parents' house. I have five Emmys. and I should be very clear. The Emmys I was awarded, I was a part of teams that made awesome future productions. My job is to make sure they can do what they do.
So the credit should go to mostly the creative work that went into it. But being a part of ESPN and being part of the sports Emmy process, a lot of the categories are around feature documentary content and we did a lot of that when I was in that group. So very fortunate to have those.
JAG: And Molly's Emmy before we forget? I don't wanna shortchange her.
Molly: Yes. One of the groups that I supported as a production coordinator was SportsCenter, and they ended up winning for Best Daily Studio show the last year that I was there. So I actually wasn't sure if I'd get my Emmy or not because they were sent out after I had already moved on.
But luckily my former coworkers took care of me and made sure I was still on the list. That was really incredible, and it was the year that everything shut down due to Covid. It was 2020 that we won. And it was definitely a logistical challenge to try and keep SportsCenter going every single day when, A, there's not really any sports to cover anymore.
And B, not really safe, or no one knows the rules of who can be around each other and how I do feel like I played a very small part in being able to keep the show on the air every day when that happened. But Alex lapped me like five times. So he’s got more.
JAG: Hey, I, the way I see it, I am talking to two Emmy award winners right now.
Let me follow up on that though, Molly, what is it like to get SportsCenter on the air in Covid, especially in the early days when everything was locked down and vaccinations weren't out and all that kind of stuff.
Molly: So they moved a lot of their comm systems to an app so that people didn't need to be in the control room together.
They could have their headphones on from their personal device and they use that instead of our usual McCurdy system.that helps people spread out and keep only the most critical people, pretty much producer director in the control room. Obviously mask policies were in place. There were travel restrictions for everyone.
I'm sure lots of people can remember the travel advisories that were out at the time, like the first couple of months of Covid. For us in Connecticut, if you leave the state to go to Massachusetts or New Jersey or wherever, now you have to quarantine for 14 days. I was the person who had to enforce that. Oh, no, Thanksgiving's coming up.
This PA wants to go home. Now they won't be able to come on campus for two weeks. So we ended up finding out a way with the IT teams for people to be able to remote into the edit machine so they could edit from home. Talent basically weren't allowed to go anywhere. Because there's not that much of a workaround for them being in studio.
We did send out a lot of at home camera equipment as well. So yeah, it was a big big push of technology and really stretching our bandwidth of how you can get people to work from home on something that, in the past, there was no way you worked a production shift remotely, ever. It was never even considered. And all of a sudden, we have to figure it out in 72 hours.
Alex: Yeah. I'm gonna interrupt here because you were at a very unique place, Molly, when the pandemic hit. Do you wanna tell the story of where you were? Not to do your job, Jag, but do you wanna tell the story?
Molly: Funny enough, it was the one banquet I wasn't able to go to was banquet 2020. I'd been to pretty much every other one since we graduated. And I wasn't able to do that because the ACC network had launched that year and we were on a two-week stent in Greensboro for the ACC Men's and Women's basketball tournaments. So I had already been there for a week at that point for the woman's tournament.
The woman's final was the weekend of the Z89 Banquet. So I couldn't go. So that was, the Saturday, Sunday, and then the men's tournament started on Tuesday. And by Wednesday night, the NBA had canceled their upcoming games. And Thursday morning our crew has the commissioner on the morning show, Packer and Durham.
At the time the ACC Commissioner comes on, he says, we are still proceeding with games. That show airs from 7 to 10. That interview happened in like the nine o'clock hour. And then by noon, multiple conferences had announced that they were canceling their tournaments at the time. The teams in the 1230 tip game were already warming up and on the court.
And by about 1215, they called off the rest of the tournament. Wow. And so now I'm the one who's tasked with giving the direction to our team as far as what we're gonna do. We still had to provide some TV coverage that day. Poor Jay Bilas was sitting on that court for 15 hours doing live hits with the crew in Bristol while we rebooked everyone else to get home as quickly as possible.
JAG: So what did he have to say for 15 hours besides, so it's canceled. No basketball?
Molly: At that time we didn't know that March Madness was going to be canceled. So it was a lot of the NCAA tournament as a whole.
These were just the conference tournaments. So there was a lot of speculation about how they would handle seedings if there's no champions in the tournaments this week. And things like that. The NCAA tournament itself I think was canceled like maybe Friday, the following day. So this was all happening on Thursday.
And we had to deal with a lot of crew and production staff that were, honestly, we had been in a bubble. We hadn't been paying that much attention to global, world news. We're like, we know it was hard to get Purell in this week when we were on our shopping runs. But we did not realize how bad it was.
And now they all have to fly home. We're in North Carolina and they gotta get back to Connecticut. And trying to make sure everyone felt safe and comfortable as they traveled back. And then those next two weeks after, I was just holding my breath hoping that no one ended up getting sick from being at the tournament when all this happened. And. We were lucky that no one did.
JAG: So one of the questions I ask all the guests, and Alex touched on this a little bit ago, but Molly, does your time at the station inform you working in difficult circumstances? Obviously you weren't dealing with a pandemic as a student, but are there things or experiences you had at the station that you felt equipped you to be in a position like that?
Molly: Yeah. So I know one of the things that Alex and I were talking about in preparation for this was the big renovation that was underway during our time at the station and I was the associate general manager at Citrus TV at the time of those renovations. So I feel and Alex has a lot more to say on this, probably, cuz it really started with him and finished with my class.
But I had to work with the general manager at Citrus and the staff at Z through just like big budget discussions, lots of critical decisions, making decisions that were going to affect everyone else. Just things like that, working through things as a student, that gives you really good life experience of how to think through things.
Working both at Citrus and at Z. For instance, like the Bernie Fine story happened while we were at Syracuse. So I just feel like there were so many different things that happened, like the Fab Melo suspension., Lots of breaking news happened while we were students. And then also just like things we were working through at the station that I feel like by the time I was at ESPN, I was really good at thinking on my feet and working through things and knowing how to just remain calm and give direction to others.
When things like this came up, like that day, it was like Thursday, March 12th, 2020, I would just remember it so specifically. Cause the next day was Friday the 13th. And it was like, yeah, this is a Friday the 13th. But that day, while it was probably the hardest I've ever worked because it was scary.
And we're away from home and everyone's confused and the plans changed a million times. I felt like I crushed my job that day. Everyone got home, everyone got rebooked. Everyone was safe. Like we did what was best for everyone involved and we handled it the best we could. It was not at all what we were expecting when we went to Greensboro for our first a ACC tournament as a network.
JAG: That is an incredible story. You both hit on this briefly. The renovation to the radio station was certainly a big part of your time as a student there, Alex.
Alex: It was, and it's the proudest achievement I have, certainly in college, but I could even rank it up in my life as well. The way the old station was laid out, obviously was functional for a long time, but the need to expand had gotten to that point where station membership was super high.
We had so many different opportunities with podcasts that were emerging in shows that were coming out, like Orange State Red Carpet Report, so we could use more facilities essentially, but Citrus TV could also use more facilities. So FoodWorks was in the middle, as many people know, and through a series of very fortunate events, and through a series of many people's contributions, the University approved a plan to effectively remove FoodWorks and move it somewhere else so that Z and Citrus could both partner and expand into that space.
Discussions of that started about 2010. It didn't really go into actual effect until about 2012. We got the approval in 2011. And just a big shout out to all the folks that put work into it. And if I missed your name, I'm so sorry, but they deserve the credit amongst the station staffers. Alex Silverman, Stephen Kurtz, for making sure that station come on the air once the renovations was complete.
GMs that helped along the way. Craig Hoffman, Cory Crockett, Liz Doyon to the Citrus TV folks as well. Brad Slavin, Katie Meldowny, my wife Molly, who was Assistant general Manager during the transition as well as Ryan Bolt and Ben Slutsky. And then obviously a big thank to the alumni and everyone that helped support that transition.
Seeing that come to life was super cool. It was beyond the time I was there. It actually started getting built. Z went on the air winter break between 2012 and 2013 in the new renovated space, but I was still lucky to be working close by. So II got to see it. But yeah, if you're pinning me down on the biggest achievement that I'm most proud of, it was to be a part of that team and be a small part to make sure that renovation went through.
JAG: Did you both leave ESPN together or separately or how did that play out?
Alex: It was within the couple months of each other. By circumstance mostly. I left to take an opportunity where I currently work Chess.com and as I've worked there, they've been exploding as a media entity where professional chess events and influencer chess events and content around that is being more and more consumed.
The Queen's Gambit is part of that. Huge thank you the chess world has to Netflix to getting a lot of eyeballs on the game. But yeah, so I left, oh my gosh, my memory's not great. June. It was June, right? Yeah. So I started in June of 2021 at chess.com. And my last role at ESPN prior to me leaving was being a part of the ESPN Plus launch, understanding how to get the 30 for 30's on the air.
So I was very lucky to end my career in a really unique position of the forefront, of direct to consumer content that ESPN was starting to lay out. But I'd always loved eSports. I always loved video games. I was watching a ton of Twitch. I started to know all the chess personalities. So I saw the opening, I had a conversation and haven't looked back since and I've loved it.
JAG: That is really cool. It's funny you mentioned 30 for 30, cuz I think back to the beginning of 30 for 30 and the idea of being 30 films for 30 years of ESPN and I don't know how many of, there are now, probably hundreds of 30 for 30's and my idea was like a 50 for 50 with this podcast, 50 interviews for 50 years the podcast and the response has been so great.
I might be going more than 50, so stay tuned for that. Molly, where did you go from ESPN when you left?
Molly: So when Alex took the job with chess.com it was full-time remote, so it opened the door for us to just reconsider. We didn't have any family in Connecticut. Not that we have family where we ended up either, but it feels like we do.
We have an Orange family. When Alex took the remote position, it was like, we can start over, we can go anywhere. And while I loved what I've been doing at ESPN, the pandemic really did change a lot of things. Your perspective changes. I feel like we had sacrificed a lot of our personal life, holidays with family, working nights and weekends, things like that, that when we came out of the pandemic, it was like, I really want an opportunity that will allow me to just have a little bit of a better work-life balance.
But I didn't wanna leave sports completely. So I started poking around and like I said, because Alex could go anywhere, I could look. Just happened that Sidearm Sports had an opening for a project manager, which was very in line with the skillset I was working with as a coordinator. And so I felt like it was a really good balance of being able to still stay with sports.
For those who don't know, it's a company that makes athletic websites and it's pretty much the leader in college athletic sites as well as a couple of other special projects that they have clients with. I applied for that. I got the job and we began the process of moving back to Syracuse.
Alex: So it's a very bizarre feeling doing like normal Dome stuff, right?
Like going to games. Getting food, but then going to your car, then driving back to your house, it's so bizarre. When your normal interpretation of that, it's like, all right, I'm gonna go back to Euclid or your dorm, or whatever it might be.
Molly: Or for so many years okay, we're gonna drive back to Connecticut.
Alex: We've had to like almost rewire ourselves to be like, is this really happening? Like we're really here. This is crazy.
JAG: There were so many JPZ alums that worked in the Syracuse market, largely in media, after graduation. I think of my classmate, Matt DelSignore, who worked for WSYR as a reporter, and he said that he liked that job because it gave him a whole different perspective of what it's like to be a Syracuse resident as opposed to a Syracuse student. And he really fell in love with the city because of it.
Alex: Yes. We can relate to that wholeheartedly. We live in Fayetteville. We get to do so many different things around the city, around the area, and I think we always knew in the back of our heads this would be a great place to live cuz we could see our favorite sports teams play, still stay involved in the station and the other things that we do.
So yeah, I totally hear 'em on that. Obviously as a student, at least when Molly and I were in school, Uber didn't exist. So a little harder to get around. I know students now use Uber and can go more into the city, so they're starting to see more of it, but I think as our generations have passed before that, more difficult to get downtown, more difficult to see things around.
So yeah, it's nice to see the students opening up to other spots in the city.
Molly: Yeah, I hardly ever left campus, so I just, I really didn't realize how much else the area has to offer. It's been awesome. There's been a lot of concerts. Gone on a lot of hikes. It's a really great place to live because you have the downtown area, but the towns surrounding it, have a really great residential feel to it, and 20 minutes we can be at a basketball game.
We were at the game the other night and we left the Dome and the snow was pelting our faces and I was like, oh, we're home.
JAG: The two of you, notably, love Syracuse so much in fact that you got married there. Tell me about the Syracuse wedding.
Molly: I'm from West Virginia, as we said, and Alex is from Maine. And when we had been discussing our wedding, we threw out a couple of different options, like maybe vacation spots or either of our hometowns. And then we were like, or we could just make everyone come to Syracuse.
Alex: They're gonna travel anyways, right? So we might as well find the middle point. Love it.
Molly: What is the best way to get all of our friends to come? So we went to a couple different venues and we landed on Hendricks Chapel as the ceremony spot and Dinosaur Barbecue as the reception. No regrets there. It is a great day, Otto came.
Alex: It was a classic Syracuse Day too, right? It was cloudy 33 degrees. By the ceremony it was raining cuz it wasn't quite cold enough to snow. So then we're going to Dino in rain. And then the following morning it's been snowing sideways all night, delaying everyone's flights out.
So everyone got the true Syracuse experience that day. It was great.
JAG: Your love for Syracuse is well documented. You had your wedding at Hendrix Chapel, your reception at Dinosaur Barbecue, but it doesn't stop there. There's a JPZ connection on your wedding day too.
Alex: There was, so you know how people do different activities the morning of. Sometimes the guys go play golf, typically the girls are getting ready. I was like, you know what, like it'd be really cool if we could do a radio show, from Z, that everyone can listen to while they're getting ready. The morning of the wedding, I was very fortunate to get in contact with the students.
At the time, they were very gracious to help us out during what was essentially the weekend going into their Thanksgiving breaks. There wasn't a lot of students on campus. I don't know why they trusted us with this authority. Obviously I am certainly not a student anymore.
JAG: But you're a former general manager that's gotta give you some cache.
Alex: Sure. They gave me a little trust there, but I brought in my groomsmen that, that were awake at the time. I brought in some of Molly's family, for Z alums that were there, Kevin Brown, Corey Crockett. So we had some professional on air personalities, a part of it, and we rotated all of Molly's cousins in, my brother Max.
And we were on for about an hour or hour and a half or so, I completely wrecked the NextGen Music order. I just picked all kinds of songs from our era. I took requests from her pastor who called into the show.
JAG: That's awesome.
Alex: And the person who administered her weddings and then some one of your cousins random friends called in to talk Washington Commander's Football.
Anyways, it was as chaotic, but awesome as you can imagine. And yeah, it was just super cool to take over the station and do something like that. And it's fun to listen back on the air check. It was quite a collection of people in our lives that made mean a lot to us that ultimately ended up on Z89's airwaves.
So I'm super appreciative of the students and everyone to make that happen.
Molly: We went into it thinking oh, Alex and Brown and Corey are just gonna go over there and, play a couple songs that the bridesmaids would wanna hear, and that'll be that. But like Alex said, the family and friends that were in town were.
We wanna see this, like they'd heard so much about Z 89 and our connection and how we met doing the student media stuff. So the fact that they all drug themselves out at bed on a cold Syracuse morning after, staying up way too late the night before and they all went to the station and could see Alex and Kevin and Corey in their elements.
That was really cool. And then for the bridesmaids back in the suite, we just had some speakers playing Z and Alex would intro the songs with little personal tidbits about this one's for Eileen. The people doing our hair and makeup were like, I can't believe that your fiancé is just like on a radio show this morning.
I'm like, yeah, this is normal.
JAG: Typically, as we close up the podcast, I ask our guests if there are lifelong friends they made at JPZ, and I'm sure it's a long list for the both of you. Let me modify that. What JPZ alumni were in your wedding?
Molly: So we went through this, right? Yeah. Yeah. Eileen Spath was my maid of honor. And she was on exec staff at Z and then Marie Strycharz was also on exec staff at Z, was one of the bridesmaids.
Quick, funny story about that. I didn't meet Marie until my senior year when we randomly ended up signing a lease together. And I remember telling Alex these are the girls. I haven't met Marie. And he was like, oh, I met Marie. I worked with her at Z. She's great. You'll really like her. And obviously I did. I liked her enough to make her a bridesmaid. And then Alex had
Alex: Yep. Corey Crockett, former general manager and Kevin Brown, sports staffer. Now of the Baltimore Orioles, play by play and ESPN, but we also have many Z people at the wedding as friends as well that showed up. You said there's a long list there.
I don't wanna do the list because I'll inevitably miss someone because I don't have in front of me. But ultimately Z was a huge part of that day, not just physically cuz of a radio show early in the morning, but the lifelong connections that you make at Syracuse amongst student media.
JAG: I do sometimes feel like when I ask that question of friends you made at J Z and through the Alumni Association, I feel like I'm giving you, I'd say an Oscar, but I guess in your guys' case in Emmy.
And it's who do you thank? And you're a always afraid you're gonna leave somebody out. I won't ask you to go give the bigger list. So I kept it small who was actually in the wedding.
Molly: Appreciate you. I will do a great shout out to Alicia, who technically got trained at Z. And was also a bridesmaid and have comeback for Z banquet.
But yes, I think she would understand that she's not the first person I think of when it comes to Z89. She was not super involved,
JAG: Molly Nelson, Alex Brewer, thank you so much for spending some time with us today and telling us about how JPZ brought you together, how it taught you so many things, and the amazing career you've both gone on to since JPZ. Welcome home to Syracuse and we'll talk to you soon.
Alex: Thanks so much. Thanks for having us.
Molly: Thank you.