College Sports Information Directors of America

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• Past 25-Year Award Recipients

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Chad Jackson – Georgia Southern University, Director of Athletic Communications

CSC 25-Year Award

by Kobe Mosley – College Sports Communicators, 2023 Intern

There are few people more deserving of a College Sports Communicators feature recognition than Chad Jackson. Since he joined CSC in 1998, Jackson has written dozens of features about others, taking the time to make sure he was telling the stories of his colleagues the best way he possibly could. That is why his dedication and service to others are being reciprocated in the form of Jackson receiving a CSC 25-Year Award this year.
 
A young Jackson grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, dreaming of one day being a sports reporter. Ironically enough, his high school did not have any sports teams. This did not deter him at all — it actually gave him freedom. As the sports editor for the school’s student newspaper, he was able to write about whatever he chose.
 
This led him to keep writing when he went to college, choosing to attend the University of Florida as a journalism major. It was in Gainesville that he discovered the world of sports information.
 
“A guy on my [dorm building] floor worked in the athletic department for Florida’s sports information office,” Jackson said. “He told me they needed someone to work the scoreboard for the baseball games … from there, I found out that there was this whole other world on the inside of athletics. I had no idea what sports information was at that point.”
 
 
Jackson would begin to learn pretty quickly what sports information was all about. He began working more and baseball games, adding more sports and more roles along the way, too. When he transferred to North Florida to finish his degree closer to home, Jackson immediately got in contact with the SID there, which was the beginning of a two-year internship with the Ospreys athletics department. The experience Jackso gained there helped him earn his first full-time job at UNC Wilmington in 1989.
 
Getting that job didn’t come without a few bumps in the road, though. During the job-searching process, Jackson was scheduled to do an interview for his future role as part of the Job Seekers session at the 1998 CoSIDA convention in Spokane, Washington. To his inconvenience, Jackson’s flight had been delayed.
 
“There were huge airline strikes at the time,” Jackson said. “And so I arrived at [the convention] a day late …  and I missed my first interview. I had to take a 6 a.m. flight out of Portland, and I slept in the airport. One of the first people that I met was [former executive director of CoSIDA] John Humenik. He checked up on me and then I met the late [CoSIDA Hall of Famer] Lawrence Fan, who coordinated the job seekers session for years. Lawrence moved things around where I was able to get my full four interviews, even though I missed one. And one of the interviews was with UNC Wilmington with (senior associate athletic director) Joe Browning.”
 
Jackson credits his time at UNC Wilmington as an invaluable period for him in terms of his progression as a professional. He was quite happy there, but decided to look for other opportunities so that he could be closer to his wife, Melissa, who was still living in Jacksonville, Florida at the time. They both applied for positions at NCAA Division II Armstrong State University, a school that at the time was in the same conference as his alma mater, North Florida. Though he got his position and his wife did not, a co-worker knew the director of Armstrong’s library. When another position opened up a few months later, Melissa was recommended, got the job, and has been there ever since.
 
Jackson entered his Armstrong position as the first person to ever hold his position full-time. He felt ready for the day-to-day work that his role entailed and learned to rely on others — student workers, photographers, and colleagues from around the conference — to help him along the way.
 
Today, looking back, Jackson advises everyone to learn as much as possible at every step of their career path; it is a major key to success.
 
“The biggest thing is [to] never feel like something is below you or is not worth it for you to learn yourself,” Jackson said. “Our profession is so much wider in the things you have to be aware of and also the things you have to be competent at … it really helps when you're going to grow your department.”
 
Keeping this mindset is what allowed Jackson to grow his department and succeed at Armstrong. In 2015, he was awarded the “Spirit of Armstrong” award, an honor that’s rarely given to members of the athletic department.
 
“It's gratifying … we had 400 full-time employees at Armstrong and to be singled out like that is amazing,” Jackson said.
 
In 2017, he was honored again, this time given the Armstrong Athletic Hall of Fame Service Citation award. This award, however, was given under less-than-desirable circumstances.
 
The spring of 2017 was also the last year of athletic competition for Armstrong State Athletics. The Georgia Board of Regents had decided to merge Armstrong State University with Georgia Southern University in an attempt to cut costs.
 
“It was surreal,” Jackson said. “We were trying to figure a way to somehow make that work and it just did not for one reason or another.”
 
One big project for Jackson was being instrumental in the building of a Hall of Champions for Armstrong State Athletics, which was unveiled in February 2022. Archives of players and teams from 1967 and 2017 are kept there and tended to by Jackson. It’s a job he takes on with great passion.
 
“I take it very seriously,” Jackson said. “A lot of people have asked me ‘Why do you bother?’ And I'm like, ‘It's 50 years of Armstrong State history, that is why.’ I will forever be the Armstrong State sports information director; no one else is going to take that position. And so I feel it's important that I keep it up as much as I can.”
 
As he approaches his sixth year at Georgia Southern, Jackson looks forward to what is next for him in his career. After the end of the spring season, he is looking forward to attending the CSC Unite23 convention in Orlando this June.
 
And still, the passion and dedication he holds for the job remain the same as it was when he began his career.
 
“Being a sports information director, a lot of times you're on the clock when you're not supposed to be on the clock, whether it's at home … or on the road,” Jackson said. “But you do the job because it has to be done.”