Brandon Edelman has been preparing for a sports writing career since high school, but the recent DU graduate says he’s going to Texas in two weeks to try his hand at media relations. He’ll intern with the MasterCard Alamo Bowl in San Antonio until next January.
In high school, Edelman’s love for writing and sports merged when he began writing for his school newspaper. During his three years at the University of Denver, Edelman continued to hone his craft at The Clarion, where he became sports editor. He interned at the Aurora Sentinel and Daily Sun newspapers, first writing sports and now working as a police reporter covering homicides, fires, animal cruelty and child neglect.
But Edelman says he wanted a break from newspapers to try his hand at public relations. He was one of 100 national applicants for the Alamo Bowl internship. Despite having little sports media experience, he made it through the rigorous screen process to become one of three interns selected to help with public relations, marketing, advertising and press conferences.
Ania Savage, a mass communications and journalism studies lecturer, recommended Edelman for the internship based on his work in her classroom and at The Clarion, where Savage is the student media adviser.
“He made the sports section interesting and eminently readable and he wrote numerous thoughtful columns on sports issues,” Savage says, noting that the internship is a good fit because Edelman loves and understands sports.
The Alamo Bowl hosts collegiate football games, but Edelman won’t be writing about hockey, lacrosse, golf and swimming and diving like he did at The Clarion. Football is all Alamo does.
“I’m not worried about being bored with one sport,” Edelman says. “It will be different from sports writing, but I want to try media relations. I’m hoping to find out if working in newspapers is really what I want to do.”
Edelman has already accomplished a great deal. When he earned his BA in journalism and Spanish from DU this June, he became the first person in his family to graduate from college.
“There’s much more to Brandon than you see on the surface,” Savage says. “He’s thoughtful, dedicated and caring with a quiet, determined ambition.”