College Sports Information Directors of America

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• 2016 CoSIDA Special Awards general announcement/release
• Special Awards feature story schedule

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 by Kevin McKinney, University of Wyoming Senior Associate AD for External Operation
 
Nordy Jensen should have known he was destined for a career in athletics.

After all, he grew up in Tempe, Arizona, with neighbors like Dan Devine, Frank Kush, and Bobby Winkles - Arizona State coaches at the time who would become iconic figures in their profession.

Nels “Nordy” Jensen is now retired after spending 40 years in the media relations business. His profession took him from Tempe, to Las Cruces, New Mexico, to San Jose State, back to Arizona State, the NCAA,  and finally to the Western Athletic Conference office in Denver.

The 1985 president of the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA), Jensen is tremendously honored to be

inducted into its Hall of Fame in Dallas this June.

“I am very fortunate to have been involved in CoSIDA and the profession itself because of the relationships I had,” Jensen said. “I learned under great people and I had the opportunity to work with super people. The business is still all about people, but I’m afraid because of the electronic advancements, many of the relationships aren’t as strong. But it is a great profession thanks to the people.

“It’s an outstanding honor to have my name among the great names of CoSIDA. My wife Alice and I had to smile, though, when we received the news. I left the profession 31 years ago and we wondered who’s left who would possibly remember me?”

Many, of course, remember him as a consummate professional who loved athletics while fostering relationships that evolved into life-long friendships.

Jensen grew up around outstanding collegiate programs in Tempe. His Dad, Nels Senior, owned a restaurant on the edge of the ASU campus and the family lived above the business.

“As I grew up around Arizona State it became clear to me that I wanted to be involved in collegiate athletics somehow,” explains Jensen. “I discovered early in high school that I wasn’t very good athletically, but I enjoyed writing. I got a job with the Arizona Republic as a high school correspondent, and that’s where I got the bug. I realized the way for me to remain involved with athletics was to write about them. I wanted to attend Missouri’s journalism school, but we really couldn’t afford that so I stayed home and went to Arizona State.”

It was actually Kush—a legendary Sun Devil football coach--who got Jensen interested in the sports information business. 

“I was the sports editor of the school newspaper, and in the summer after graduation I also mowed lawns to earn college tuition money,” Jensen recalled. “One day Kush stopped me while I was mowing and we got to talking. He asked me what I thought I wanted to do and I told him ‘to stay in sports and write.’  He said, ‘go see this guy,’ who turned out to be the SID, Dick Stigt. He ended up hiring as a student-assistant. That’s where it all began. During my four years as a student assistant, I worked for three different SID’s, all great guys who taught me a ton about the business.”

Jensen actually interviewed for the SID job at New Mexico State during the fall semester of his senior year (1963-64). He was

hired with the understanding he would start after graduation and that’s where his professional career began. 

At Las Cruces he met his lovely bride, Alice, who was going to graduate school there. A year-and-a-half later (1965), he moved to San Jose State, where Eric, the first of his four sons was born. Greg (1970), Brent (1972) and Kurt (1975) followed to fill out the Jensen roster. 

Jensen returned to Arizona State in 1968 to replace Dick “Moon” Mullins, who was his boss for two years during his student assistant days. After a year at the NCAA, he moved to the Western Athletic Conference office in Denver as its information director. He was the WAC’s SID for 13 years.

“A large part of my time at Arizona State and the WAC office was spent being on the ground floor for the evolution of two great bowl games, the Fiesta and the Holiday,” Jensen said. “It was exciting, and gave me the opportunity to work with a lot of great athletics directors.”

Jensen moved out of athletics to become public affairs director for the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, taking that position in 1985. He was able to keep his hand in the SID world, though, working part time for the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. He retired in 2008. 

“SIDs weren’t being paid very much back then, so I had to quit my fun job (SID), to get a real one,” he quips. After 13 years in the Colorado community college system, he retired in 2009.

“I was very fortunate to be involved in the profession and in CoSIDA during a tremendous age,” Jensen said. “It was rewarding to work with athletes, administrators and the media. During that time, people stayed in their jobs a lot longer, so you really got to know them. We had many opportunities to bond, and I made life-long friends through the business. I’m not sure there is as much bonding today, especially with the media, as there was back then.”

He also was around the profession during the dawning of the computer age. 

“That was certainly the biggest advancement I experienced during my time. We didn’t have to dictate box scores or use a slide rule for stats anymore,” he laughed. “There have been so many great technical advancements to make the job easier in a lot of ways.

“But it remains a people business and I believe that’s the greatest part of it.”