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He’s just living the dream.
Bill Dyer, the Associate Director of Athletic Communications/Assistant Director of Sports Information at Virginia Tech, is standing in the empty Greensboro Coliseum awaiting the start of the ACC basketball tournament. He is reflecting on his 25 years in the sports information profession, for which he will be honored at the CoSIDA Convention in Orlando on June 11.
“It’s the start of ACC basketball tournament week and I’m ready to go work that tournament,” he muses. “Forty years ago the 13-year-old kid in me would have died to just come to a game, let alone to say you’re going to have an all-access credential and a parking pass and you’re going to walk around wherever you want to go – fairy tale.”
As with most SIDs it has been a long climb for the Danville, Va., native.
It began with a realization that he had reached the end of the road as an athlete while at James Madison, and the desire to stay connected to
sports.
As a freshman at JMU he decided that sports journalism might be the road to travel, so he attended the opening meeting of the school newspaper.
“I knew I wasn’t going to get football, or basketball, or baseball, or any of the prime sports. I got assigned to intramural flag football and I decided there had to be a better way to spend my practicum hours.”
The next thing he tried was the sports information office where CoSIDA Hall of Famer Rich Murray took him under his wing.
“The great thing about Rich,” he notes, “Is that he teaches you how to do things: this is the proper way to clip an article, or run a telecopier, the proper way to write a release.”
JMU was a growing school at the time and gave Dyer a chance to be involved in many areas of sports information.
After graduating in 1984 he had an opportunity to experience just about every aspect of the profession at several different levels.
There was a graduate assistantship at Southeastern Louisiana; an assistant’s position at Division III Hampden-Sydney, where he was also an assistant athletic trainer, and an internship at the University of Florida under another Hall of Famer, John Humenik.
Dyer has a great understanding of what SIDs at small schools face. And, as a long-time member of CoSIDA's Job Seekers Committee, he uses that knowledge and experience from his many years in the profession to assist young and aspiring athletic communications professionals.
“It’s unbelievable the amount of knowledge you get in that situation,” he notes. “That’s why when we hire interns we love to hire kids from smaller schools. If you’re a student at a small school you know how to do a lot of stuff.”
In April of 1989 Dyer had an opportunity to become an assistant SID at Villanova, a post he held for four years. He then moved on to Syracuse for five years, where two of the top experiences in his career took place.
“I always point to the national championship we won in lacrosse when I was at Syracuse,” he remembers. “A national championship is obviously very special.”
The other was the bitter-sweet experience of the 1996 Final four when Syracuse lost the title game to Kentucky. Still, reaching the Final Four was a highlight.
But Dyer doesn’t dwell on experiences, it’s the people he has met, and the friendships that endured.
“One of the things I pride myself on,” he says, “Is that I have a lot of friends in this business. I don’t necessarily
have a lot of friends that are
Division I, or Division II or Division III, I have friends in the business. There are so many good people that you can learn so much from at every level of this business.”
But, of course, there are always the ones along the way that stand out just a little
Murray is the one who got him started and remains a close friend. Another is his boss at Tech, Dave Smith, whom he has known for almost all of his professional career. Craig Miller, of USA Basketball and Larry Kimball, at Syracuse, also come to mind, but always with the “I don’t want to leave anyone out” qualifier.
A chance to join Virginia Tech was a dream-come-true.
He left Syracuse to become SID at Appalachian State, where he served for two years, but always wanted to return to a bigger school.
“Virginia Tech has always been home to me. My mother was at a point at that time where I wanted to be a two-hour drive, than two plane flights away from her.”
There is a big family connection to the Hokies: his father is a 1952 grad and his brother a 1982 alum.
“Professionally, 25 years ago, if you had asked me what I would want to be doing in 25 years, I would have told you I wanted to be at Virginia Tech or in ACC basketball. Who would have thought, 25 years ago, that the two could intertwine.”
So Dyer will be in Orlando, proudly sporting his Tech gear, and catching up with his many friends.
In other words, living the dream.