College Sports Information Directors of America

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Rob Knox – Thurgood Marshall College Fund, Senior Director, Strategic Communications

CSC Mary Jo Haverbeck Trailblazer Award
Presented annually to an individual who is a pioneer in the field of athletic communications who has mentored and helped improve the level of diversity within College Sports Communicators. Voted on by the Special Awards Committee.

by Scottie Rodgers – Cotton Bowl Athletic Association // CSC Special Awards Committee member

Talk to people who know Rob Knox or someone who met has met him once briefly and chances are the same word will come up – passion.
 
Knox has a passion for his profession that he is now putting to use in his current role at the Thurgood Marshall College Fund as senior director of strategic communications. Passion for his craft of telling stories. Passion for advocacy, athletes and administrators. Passion for his friends. Passion for his family. Passion for the people he works with, works for and works to shine a light on. And, this passion has led to him being what I refer to as “the people’s champion.”
 
And it is his passion that has been at the core of his personal and professional journey that afforded him to thrive in and around college athletics and accomplish so many things in his career, including his most recent honor – 2022-23 recipient of the College Sports Communicators Mary Jo Haverbeck Trailblazer Award.
 
His desire to evolve as a professional has taken him down roads he was not planning to travel coming from his beginnings in Chester, Pa. Knox’s passion professionally guided him to down paths not many who looked like him had traveled before him, leading him all the way to becoming just the second Black person to be president of CoSIDA (now CSC).
 
 
This journey in sports goes back more than 25 years before Rob’s time on the Board of Directors at his beloved alma mater, Lincoln University, an HBCU located in the southern part of Chester County in Pennsylvania. He got his start in athletics communications at NCAA Division II Lincoln after beginning his journalism career as a sportswriter at the Delaware County Times and Philadelphia Inquirer. It was there where his love and passion for promoting anything and every Lincoln flourished. And it was there that he made longtime connections with so many people.
 
One of those people is Monique Smith, who at the time worked at the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) office. Coming up in the CIAA through Lincoln and learning from legends in the profession like Eric Moore, April Emory and so many others was huge for Knox in his growth and early development. And it gave him the professional family he needed to grow and be successful.
 
"Rob was excited to be around a family. He fit right in," Smith said. "If someone was hosting something, we're all going to be there to make sure you have the best regional or the best championship. We cultivated each other."
 
As Knox was being cultivated by others, he began cultivating the numerous people who worked alongside him across his stops at Lincoln, Kutztown, ESPN, Coppin State, Towson and UNC Greensboro. One of the first to experience Knox's professional passion was Jordean Matthews, the first student assistant to work with him in the athletics communications office at Lincoln.
 
Matthews, the first and only Black woman to win the EAST-COMM (previously ECAC-SIDA) Bill Esposito Award who now works outside of sports in the IT field in the Atlanta area, can still remember the initial impressions she had in meeting Knox and learning from him as an aspiring sports communicator.
 
"Just seeing the way Rob communicated with the athletes and how he always wanted to tell the story of the athlete, not just what they did on and off the field. He wanted to dive deep and get to know who they are," Matthews remembered.
 
"He got me interested in doing feature stories and understanding the person as a whole outside of just what they do on the field."
 
That theme of getting inside the story or paying attention to the details remains a hallmark of how Knox approaches his work and coaches others to approach their work. Brittany Stewart, a graduate assistant under Knox at Kutztown University, remembers all too well.
 
 "When I say it was like boot camp under Rob, it was boot camp," remembered Stewart, the inaugural recipient of CSC Langston Rogers Postgraduate Scholarship who is now a corporate communications manager at PulteGroup in the Atlanta area. "He trained us and got us up to speed. We came in knowing a little bit, but honestly, Rob made us well-oiled machines. One thing that always stood out was that Rob was very meticulous. There were no skipping steps with Rob. You had to do it and you had to do it right."
 
Doing right meant teaching others the tenants of his gift to tell stories and show them how to find the emotion, the passion in sports. In some cases, whether they wanted to or not.
 
"Anything we wanted to learn, Rob made sure we knew it," said Stewart. "Anything we were scared to learn, Rob made sure we did it."
 
And learned they did, especially his passion.
 
"My first encounter with him was just passion," added Stewart. "Rob just has a passion for people that he still exudes to this day. I have never met anyone who is so passionate and who cares that much about people – about coaches, administrators and student-athletes. He has a gift to tell stories and that's the one thing he pulled out of me. It's something I still use in my career."
 
Another one of his former graduate assistants, Candace Johnson, who worked with him at Coppin State, offered an almost identical description of Knox when she first met him.
 
"When I met him, he had this wonderful energy and presence that I knew going into it that it was going to be hard work but it's also going to be fun," said Johnson. "Coming out of college and being in that type of environment, it was so much fun to be around Rob. His laughter, everything is infectious about him. He really wanted me to learn and ask questions and gave me room to grow. What more can you ask for really starting out in the industry."
 
Energy, enthusiasm, and yes, passion.
 
Those traits have been what has fueled Knox to an already successful career filled with honors and recognitions, including being inducted into the athletics Hall of Fame at his beloved Lincoln in 2015, named the (CoSIDA) Rising Star for the college division in 2011 and tapped with the NCAA Champion of Diversity Award in 2022.
 
One particular aspect that has fueled Knox throughout his career is his passion to promote women and women of color in sports – from the coverage he created at the schools he worked to his freelance work covering the WNBA. 
 
"Rob does such a great job of specially being a champion for women and women of color, recognizing that we have so much to give to this industry and sports of all kinds," noted Johnson. "He really wants your story to be told. He really wants to be an advocate for you in any way possible."
 
Smith said it best: "Rob speaks loudly when he speaks about women's sports."
 
Using his voice and his way with words to be an advocate for so many is what Rob Knox is about. Sharing his unique brand of passion with so many is who Rob Knox is.  
 
"He's known in this space to be such a professional and such a great person," said Matthews. "I'm never really surprised when he gets recognized. I am thankful for him, grateful for him and happy for him. I know there is more coming for him because he's so good at everything.”
 
There is definitely more coming to Knox in his future. But his past and present have blazed a trail worthy of celebration and recognition. With passion, of course.