College Sports Information Directors of America

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Charles Bloom – South Carolina, Executive Associate AD/Chief of Staff/Chief Communications Officer

Arch Ward Award
Presented annually to a current CoSIDA member who has made outstanding contributions to the field of college sports information, and who by his or her activities, has brought dignity and prestige to the profession. Voted on by the Special Awards Committee.

by Sean Cartell – Sun Belt Conference, Assistant Commissioner, Communications & Branding

Being honored with the Arch Ward Award this June in Las Vegas will be a full-circle moment for CoSIDA Hall of Famer and former president Charles Bloom.

As a junior in high school, Bloom moved more than 2,400 miles from Emporia, Va., to Las Vegas with his family.

It was a difficult transition for Bloom at such a formative time in his life. He often felt lost during that period. Starting a career in sports journalism and later sports information, however, was what helped him persevere, and find a sense of purpose and community.
 

“It was a challenging move,” said Bloom, now Executive Associate Athletics Director and Chief of Staff at the University of South Carolina. “I grew up in Emporia, Va., which is a town of about 5,000 people. I moved to Las Vegas, which at the time was about half a million. It was a very difficult transition, but journalism helped me a great deal to make the transition.”

Bloom started his career as a stringer, covering high school football games for the Las Vegas Sun. In a then-two-newspaper town, it was there that he met Joe Hawk, a longtime Las Vegas Review-Journal sports writer, columnist and editor. At the time, Hawk was a recent graduate of UNLV, having worked in the sports information office, and was a fellow stringer.

“I was at a high school game and Joe was the stringer for the other paper,” Bloom said. “He had been a student assistant in the sports information office. Joe told me that I should go by and check out UNLV sports information when I got to college. I said, ‘What do you mean sports information?’ I didn’t know what it was at the time.”

There weren’t any openings in the UNLV sports information office when Bloom began his college career the next year. He did work as the in-house public address announcer for UNLV football, took prominent roles with the student newspaper and student yearbook, was the publicity director for the campus radio station and served as a student senator.

The following year, Bill Bennett was named Sports Information Director at UNLV. He brought Bloom on board as a student assistant and played a pivotal role in his life. It sparked a lifetime passion for Bloom who, in 2011, was inducted into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame.

This summer, life will come full-circle for Bloom, who will return to Las Vegas to accept one of his profession’s highest honor – the Arch Ward Award – at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas. The Arch Ward honor is presented annually to a current CoSIDA member who has made outstanding contributions to the field of college athletic communications, and who by his or her activities, has brought dignity and prestige to the profession.

“One of the things I’ve thought a lot about is that it will be in Las Vegas,” Bloom said. “To get the award just a couple of miles from where I went to college and high school, it means a lot to me.”

It is a well-deserved award for Bloom, whose fingerprints are all over some of the most transformative changes in collegiate athletics over the past three decades.

As CoSIDA President in 2007-08, Bloom and the CoSIDA board at the time, which included Vice Presidents Nick Joos, Justin Doherty and Larry Dougherty, along with Past President Doug Dull, were responsible for hiring CoSIDA’s first Executive Director and setting the wheels in motion for the organization’s first strategic plan.

“We had a great board that year,” Bloom said. “We wanted to go in that direction as a group. I felt that I needed to bring the group together and try to get that done. I knew that we wanted to grow CoSIDA from more than an organization where our primary focus was just on the nuts and bolts. We wanted it to be a group for strategic communicators and our focus was on that. We hired John Humenik as Executive Director. John was an unbelievable ball of energy, and took it and ran with it. I was very fortunate to work with those folks. If those people aren’t there, it doesn’t get done.”

As Associate Commissioner for Media and Public Relations at the Southeastern Conference from 1995-2012, Bloom had the opportunity to be heavily involved in the formation of the Bowl Championship Series, particularly the formula for selecting the game’s participants, alongside Commissioner Roy Kramer.

“I was sitting outside Commissioner Kramer’s office one day when he was on a conference call with the other commissioners talking about the structure of what would become the BCS,” Bloom said. “He invited me to come in, I sat at the table and listened. Most of the conversation revolved around the idea that they were going to put the two best teams in the game and how do we do that?

After the call, I said, ‘Commish, I’ve got an idea, let’s talk it over.’ Lo and behold, he liked it. We spent hours and hours and hours of research. From there, there needed to be a PR plan and a media relations strategy. He asked me to come up with something they could take to the bowls.”

Bloom has also been instrumental in many other innovations within collegiate athletics, including the pitch clock in college baseball and a reimagination of the postseason conference tournament model in baseball.

Despite his many accomplishments and his larger-than-life contributions to college athletics and the college athletics communications profession, Bloom has always been focused on the people in his life and the relationships that he has formed. As he prepares to receive the Arch Ward Award this summer, Bloom credits his success to those who have influenced him.

“I look at this award as a reflection of the investment the people who I’ve worked with have made in me,” Bloom said. “I’m so thankful. I’m just an average guy who probably has a stronger than average work-ethic and a stronger than average ability to work with others. Everyone has had such a huge impact on me.

“I’m most proud when I hear from former staff members. They tell me how they’ve grown in the profession or grown in their lives. To me, that means so much. That’s the reason I’m getting this outstanding honor – it’s the people.”