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This story is part of our March 2022 CoSIDA 360 package, to view more stories,
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It's the most wonderful time of the year for David Worlock and Rick Nixon
Since 2006, Worlock and Nixon have served as media coordinators for the two highest profile NCAA tournaments in college basketball: Worlock for the men’s tournament and Nixon for the women’s tournament.
by Doug Vance – CoSIDA Executive Director @dvancecosida
David Worlock and
Rick Nixon’s first jobs in the athletic communications profession bear little resemblance to the magnitude of responsibilities they now have.
Both Worlock and Nixon launched their careers working in one-person SID shops for low-profile athletic programs. Worlock started at his alma mater, Henderson State, and Nixon at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
That modest beginning in the world of sports information was obviously not a detriment in their rise to what is arguably the pinnacle of the profession. Since 2006, Worlock and Nixon have served as media coordinators for the two highest profile NCAA tournaments in college basketball: Worlock for the men’s tournament and Nixon for the women’s tournament.
And, of course, the arrival of March means a month of madness that extends into the first week of April. Both will have a reserved seat in their respective tournament committees meeting rooms on Selection Sunday, serving as a resource of information as each tournament bracket is filled.
That process charts their course over the following three weeks. It will include 67 games and culminates with one team cutting down the nets to celebrate a national championship.
“When the committee starts to meet that week, I always walk into the room and greet Dan Gavitt (NCAA Senior Vice President of Basketball) by saying, ‘Merry Christmas!’,” said Worlock.
Nixon views his job with the same reverence.
“I pinch myself every day to make sure this role is real,” said Nixon. “It’s really pretty amazing.”
Their favorite and busiest time of the year has arrived.
David Worlock – NCAA Director of Media Coordination and Statistics, Championships External Operations — Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament
Without hesitation, Worlock will proclaim that, “this is a job I was meant to do.”
David Worlock receiving a CoSIDA 25-Year Award in 2018. He was inducted into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame in 2020.
He spent his formative years in Augsburg, Germany where his father was stationed. That didn’t curtail Worlock’s interest in the tournament or his access to follow its results.
“I was obsessed with the tournament,” said Worlock.
He would dutifully set his alarm for 3 a.m. so he could wake up and watch the tournament games televised on the Armed Forces Network.
Worlock grew up in a family of Syracuse fans. He witnessed his first Final Four as a fan in-person in 2003 at the Superdome in New Orleans when Syracuse defeated Kansas to win the national championship.
He decided to attend Henderson State in Arkadelphia, Ark., because the father of a girl he was dating in Germany became head of the ROTC at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia. He enrolled in the fall of 1988.
Worlock wrote for his school paper at HSU and had a part-time job washing dishes at Western Sizzlin. Steve Eddington, then SID, was impressed with his writing and offered him a job as a student assistant. Eddington would later play a role in helping Worlock replace him as the school’s sports information director, a job he held from 1993-2001.
Throughout the years, Worlock built a strong reputation with those on the NCAA statistics staff for his efficiency in reporting data. He was eventually rewarded for that commitment to accuracy when the NCAA hired him in 2001 to be an assistant director of statistics.
He served as media coordinator for the College World Series in 2004 and 2005. Worlock took over as coordinator for the basketball staff in 2006.
David Worlock (center) with the 2019 Men's Final Four media coordination crew.
"It's like Christmas for Dave," said Gavitt of March Madness. "He grew up loving the tournament. Now being able to be part of the tournament in a really intimate and important way, he values it more than anything short of his family."
"He's got a steel-trap mind and holds a lot of information in there,” Gavitt added. “He frequently impresses committee members with his quick recall of games, dates, results, what players were injured and unavailable. His recall of things is invaluable."
Worlock spends the first two weeks of tournament games embedded in the tournament “command center” at the NCAA headquarters monitoring games. He will travel to the Final Four host site (this year New Orleans) a week prior to the start of the national championship semi-finals on Saturday.
Worlock, who was inducted into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame in 2020, will issue approximately 2,000 media credentials, including those for the NCAA television partners.
Beyond the NCAA staff, Worlock has a media coordination team which is made up of current or former sports information directors from around the country who volunteer their time. In addition, the local host institution SID brings in a group of volunteers who have athletic communication experience.
His SID background has served him well in dealing with the unexpected requests that sometimes surface with the job. He recalls being at the “wrong place at the wrong time” two years in a row as the championship team was cutting down the nets.
“I was on the court after the championship game and the guy in charge of the ladder handed me the scissors for cutting down the net,” said Worlock. “It really wasn’t my job, but I made sure to guide the players carefully through the process to make sure they handled everything in proper fashion.”
“You learn as an SID that no job is too small and you don’t say no when asked to do something.”
Rick Nixon – NCAA Director of Media Coordination and Statistics, Championships External Operations — Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament
Although totally unintentional, Nixon was nonetheless auditioning for a role on the NCAA basketball staff while working as the local media coordinator for a variety of basketball championship tournaments hosted by his school at the Alamodome during his tenure in San Antonio.
The University of Texas at San Antonio served as the host school for six NCAA championship events in basketball from 1998 through 2004, including the men’s Final Four (1998, 2004) and the women’s Final Four (2002).
Nixon was eventually rewarded for his efficient efforts at those events.
His NCAA tournament experience was a fortunate factor in catching the eye of Sue Donohoe, former director of both the women’s and men’s NCAA Division I basketball tournaments.
“Sue Donohoe had seen me work at all of these tournaments and talked to me about replacing Scottie Rodgers (now media coordinator of the Goodyear Cotton Bowl) after he left to join the university relations staff at CSTV as a senior director,” Nixon recalled.
“It was an exciting opportunity for me, and I didn’t hesitate to accept the responsibility when it was offered,” he added.
Nixon worked as assistant athletics director for media relations at UTSA since 1987 before joining the NCAA staff in 2006.
Like his counterpart on the men’s side, it’s customary for Nixon to spend the first two weeks of the NCAA tournament in Indianapolis keeping tabs on as many of the tournament games as possible. He’ll be among the few non-committee members serving as a resource of information while the women’s basketball committee deliberates before eventually filling the tournament bracket.
His job as the media coordinator doesn’t start in March. It involves a well-planned 12-month sequence of events in preparation for one high-drama weekend.
“We are involved in tournament site visits throughout the year that include meeting with the host school support staff,” Nixon explained. “There is training involved and the orientation process in helping everyone understand policies and the process.”
Rick Nixon center with 2019 Women's Final Four Media Coordination team
Nixon’s interests in the athletics communication world was primed by his dad, Harry Nixon, who served as sports information director at Trinity University in San Antonio.
“My father got the SID job at Trinity at age 61,” Nixon said. “He’s the one who introduced me to the profession. I got my degree in journalism, broadcasting and film at Trinity. I was working for an advertising agency when the job at the University of Texas at San Antonio opened up.”
Nixon will have an army of volunteer support when he arrives in Minneapolis this year for the women’s Final Four. He will have help from a media coordination team that includes current and former SIDs who have served in that role for several years. In addition, the local host will have a group of SID volunteers to assist the media coordination process at the Final Four.
“Our tournament continues to grow from where it was when I started,” said Nixon. “It has gotten better each year. From where we’ve come to where we are is impressive.”
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