College Sports Information Directors of America

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Roots Woodruff – University of Alabama, Associate Athletics Communications Director (retired)

CSC Lifetime Achievement Award

by Barb Kowal – College Sports Communicators, Director of Professional Development and External Affairs

Prior to his retirement in December of 2022, Roots Woodruff knew only undergraduate and professional life in the SEC. A graduate of the University of Georgia, Woodruff then started as a sports information intern at the University of Alabama in 1990 and stayed more than 32 years before retiring from ‘Bama as an associate athletics communications director at the end of 2022. He received his CSC 25-Year Award in 2022.
 
Trained by one of the CSC legends, he started in sports communications as a volunteer assistant for CSC Hall of Famer Claude Felton, after being a four-year Bulldog swimming and diving letterwinner. He graduated in the winter of 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. 
 
During his 30-plus years at Alabama, he oversaw the Crimson Tide’s highly successful Academic All-America program, boosting UA to fifth in all-time honors among NCAA DI programs. Woodruff also nominated and promoted numerous national and conference honorees, including a Honda Cup winner, multiple Honda Award winners, a NCAA Award of Valor honoree, NCAA & SEC postgraduate scholarship recipients, and several CSC Academic All-Americans of the Year. 
 
His UA tenure included serving as the primary contact for four NCAA Gymnastics Champions and as part of the communications efforts for seven national football championship teams. As a long-time CSC member, Woodruff earned Stabley Writing Contest “story of the year” recognition and numerous “best in the nation” certificates in CSC’s publications contests over the years.
 
 
Your entire college experience was in the SEC, and your full-time work at only one university - first as an undergraduate at Georgia, and then in different athletic communications roles at Alabama. Tell us why it was Alabama for your entire career.
RW: Between swimming at Georgia, working for CSC Hall of Fame Claude Felton at UGA after my competitive career was over, and then coming over to Tuscaloosa, I was in the SEC for 36-plus years.

With the retirement of my UGA coach, Jack Bauerle in June 2022, I may have had the longest ongoing tenure when it comes to working within SEC swimming and diving - prior to my retirement. Jack is the one, who during my senior year, asked me what I wanted to do after I graduated. I held up our media guide, which was more of a pamphlet at the time, and said I think I could do something like this, not realizing that media guides were a small part of sports information. So, Jack got me an appointment with Claude, and the rest as they say is history.

Claude, and everyone who was working in that office at that time, were awfully good to take me under their wing and show me the ropes. Claude also handed me a copy of the NCAA News job listings section, and I wrote to everyone with an opening. I heard back from Notre Dame and Alabama. Larry White at Alabama was making a trip to Atlanta for business, and we met for lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and about halfway through the first basket of chips, I realized that he was offering me the job. It turns out that they needed someone for their intern position that knew swimming and computers, and I fit the bill.

I thought I would be here six months before I found a full-time gig … instead, it was nearly 33 years at Alabama since I made my way down the Coleman Coliseum stairs to find the Alabama SID office. I often joke that if you look at my paperwork, it probably still lists me as an intern. From those first days, I had the good fortune to work with a majority of our sports in one capacity or another, and I’ve been part of the incredible changes that our profession and collegiate athletics as a whole have gone through over the last 30-plus years.

The work has been challenging, the people outstanding and the experience extraordinary.

What are some of your top successes and highlights as an athletic communications pro and as a leader of your department? What can you point to as your most significant successes as a SID?
RW: In addition to promoting a number of championship programs on the field, I think we’ve done a good job at Alabama telling the story of our academic success, especially when it comes to the CoSIDA/CSC Academic All-America program and other national and conference honors in that arena. I am pretty proud of the work I’ve done over the years with our publications in terms of content, layout and design and to have had some success within the (CoSIDA) publications and writing contests. More than anything though, I’m proud of the relationships I’ve built within the industry and to have been able to chip in and lend a hand whereever I was needed within our department over my 30-plus years at Alabama.

We are at a crossroads right now in college athletics with all the changes, with people leaving our profession and other college athletic positions, and staying power is waning. Your thoughts and advice to the athletic communicators out there on how to best approach the job, the pressures and expectations?
RW: Keep your head on a swivel and never retype anything that’s already been typed - those are two pieces of advice that I pass along to the students that came through our office. This being a recognition of a quarter of century (or more) in our profession, I guess I can skip the part where I say I don’t want to date myself, but anyone who has been a part of what we do since the 1990s went from fax machines to email, from printing, folding and stuffing football releases on Sunday’s and taking them to the post office to laying them out using desktop publishing and hitting send on an email, from newspapers to websites to social media.

So, our world has been changing pretty significantly since I got into this profession, but it’s evident that the speed of evolution when it comes to collegiate athletics hit warp speed over the last three years. The way media has changed, and continues to change, along, with the advent of and ever-expanding demands of social media has changed our profession pretty significantly. As to people leaving the business and staying power waning, I think that’s always been the case to some degree or another. I know for the longest time, it was five-10 years or lifers, there wasn’t a lot of middle ground. But COVID, NIL and a landscape within department’s that is beginning to look significantly different, has caused something of a mass exodus. The hours are getting longer, the breaks are few and the battle always seems uphill, so you have to love college athletics for what it is, not for what our friends and family think it is from the glimpses they catch of us on TV (or more likely, on their streaming devices now).

Advice to young professionals?
RW: You also have to keep sight of the fact that we’re here for the student-athletes, coaches and staff. If you find joy in working with others and lifting them up, then this might be for you. If you’re going to ride this latest wave, you must be fluid and comfortable with change, because these days that’s the only constant. And as I mentioned, keep your head on a swivel and never retype anything that’s already been typed.
 
What do you see as the most pressing issues facing athletic communicators moving forward? 
RW: Finding the best ways to tell the stories of our departments and teams in an effective way. Finding the best balance between personal and professional, even during cross over season. Not getting overwhelmed, staving off burnout and staying fluid as the landscape changes moment-to-moment.

If you were not in college athletics, what other career path do you think you would have taken?
RW: I closed out my swimming career and graduated around the same time after three and a half years at UGA, and almost immediately started working in the sports information office in what was essentially a student assistant role. I was also coaching with the Athens Bulldog Swim Club and my college coach, Jack Bauerle, had mentioned serving as a graduate assistant with the team the next fall. There was a possibility that I could have ended up in coaching if the Alabama SID job hadn’t come along. But I think I was always headed toward a profession where I could write, whether it was public relations or journalism.

None of us are where we are without mentors. Name a few who have made significant contributions to your growth, personally and/or professionally.
RW: This is always tricky, because you’re going to leave out someone significant, and feel horrible about it later. I’ll start with my swimming coaches at UGA, especially Jack Bauerle and Harvey Humphries, who in addition to overseeing the hours upon hours I spent playing wall tag in Stegeman Hall, taught me so much about life its self.

Claude Felton and everyone who was on the UGA sports information staff in the spring and summer of 1990 gave me an outstanding crash course on the business and set me on this path. Larry White, who took a chance on a guy who probably still smelled of chlorine throughout that first year and kept him around long after the internship was over. I learned as much during lunches at Pepitos with Larry as I did from any class I ever took. I’ve learned something from every coach I’ve worked with, and that number is starting to pile up, but my 20 years with (nationally renowned gymnastics coaches) Sarah and David Patterson certainly taught me an awful lot, even if I still don’t know a shushunova from a rootsunova!

I’ve also had the opportunity to work with some of the giants in collegiate athletics - in our profession, in athletics at large and in the media - and so many of them left me better than they found me and only a few left me with scars. I am always grateful when someone takes an interest along the way and helps me be better. And above all, there’s Bob and Margo Woodruff, parents of the first order.

If you could trade jobs with someone you know, who would you trade with and why?
RW: I think Tony Stark had a pretty good gig - genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. But if we’re sticking with real people, our photographers and videographers at Alabama do a phenomenal job and make it look easy, which it’s not. If I could be good at it, I think I’d like to do something along those lines.

I knew Scottie Rogers when he was a student in our office at Alabama and have followed his career trajectory ever since, and while I know his current gig as communications director at the Goodyear Cotton Bowl is challenging, I think I’d enjoy the work. I would also say magazine writer or perhaps podcast host, both of which are much harder than they appear, but would certainly speak to my general curiosity about the world around me.
 
Favorite getaway spot for you ... and why ...
RW: The next place. I really enjoy exploring new spots, especially if I can do it with friends or family. That said, Athens will always hold a significant place in my heart, with a special shoutout to the Taco Stand on the corner of Prince and Milledge, which in all these many years has never disappointed1 I firmly believe that my first and likely only NIL deal, if it had been an option in the ‘80s, would have been with the Taco Stand.

What are your biggest hobbies and interests?
RW: Reading, writing, photography, pop culture (the ‘80s edition) and good food with good friends, including, but not limited to, being part of the annual “gymnastics SID power breakfast” with Mary Howard (Florida) and Liza David (UCLA) that has been going on for 20 something years (COVID shutdowns notwithstanding).