Meet the Super Bowl’s most fresh-faced reporters: Four Gonzaga journalism students thrilled at the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ chance to cover the big game

SAN FRANCISCO – Reaching the Super Bowl might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the players on Sunday.

Covering it, or at least the week leading up, doesn’t come around often for reporters, either.

Four Gonzaga University seniors got that chance this week, joining hundreds of media members beside them in interviewing star players and experiencing the aura of Super Bowl week.

“This week has been a dream come true,” said Michael Hanrahan, a broadcast journalism major. “It’s amazing.”

Hanrahan and his classmates, Natalie Keller, Madylin Campbell and Kyle Sweeney, were the lucky broadcasting students selected to fly to the Bay Area and put the skills they learned in the classroom to the test.

John Collett, assistant professor of the school’s Integrated Media Department, said this was his first time taking a group of students to the Super Bowl. He got the idea last year from a faculty member at a different school who takes her students on an educational trip to the largest football event of the year.

Collett said he thought it would be invaluable hands-on experience. He applied for media credentials last fall and learned over winter break he could bring four students.

Multiple Gonzaga students applied for the Super Bowl week opportunity, and a committee in the Integrated Media Department, which covers broadcasting, journalism and public relations, looked over their application materials before selecting Keller, Campbell, Sweeney and Hanrahan.

The Gonzaga group arrived in the Bay Area on Sunday and flew back to Spokane Thursday.

During that five-day stretch, Collett and his students were immersed in the Super Bowl week experience, often working 12-to-14-hour days interviewing , taking and editing video at news conferences, NFL community outreach events and one-on-one interviews.

Often skipping meals and staying up late, they quickly posted their photos and video clips to Gonzaga University Television’s YouTube and Instagram accounts. All told, the seniors posted 23 times on Instagram and 15 videos on YouTube.

They covered the media frenzy of Super Bowl week opening night, a Bad Bunny news conference and other NFL events.

The giant opening night event where media members swarmed players for interviews was one of the many learning opportunities for Collett’s students.

“That was, I think, the first taste for them, like, ‘Wow, we’re here,’ ” he said. “Think of all the media members here, like internationally, and GUTV, Gonzaga University is here, and it was cool to see them kind of rise to the occasion.”

The students interviewed key Seattle Seahawks players, like Ernest Jones IV and Jaxon Smith-Njigba. They spoke with NBC broadcasters, like analyst and former NFL quarterback Chris Simms, who will be part of the pregame show, and Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth, who are calling the Super Bowl.

Collett said there’s no way to mentally prepare for the plethora of events and interview opportunities during the week. But, his students handled it well.

“I think it’s a testament to just the students at Gonzaga – high character, really driven, self-motivated,” he said.

Collett got a taste of Super Bowl week 11 years ago when he covered the first Super Bowl meeting between the Seahawks and New England Patriots while working as an SWX sports broadcaster for KHQ. So he knew it was more than just covering the teams.

“We have a student (Keller) right now at the halftime press conference,” said Collett, who worked at SWX from 2012 to 2016. “So, Bad Bunny’s there. I think all of her peers and her generation will be jealous that she got to be there.”

Keller, a journalism major who wants to be TV news reporter, called the experience “surreal.”

She’s interned at KHQ and KXLY this school year.

She said she enjoyed interviewing players and NBC media members, as well as attending the Apple Music Halftime Show news conference with Bad Bunny and Charlie Puth, the latter of whom will sing the National Anthem before the game.

She also liked covering NFL events away from the actual game Sunday, like a tree-planting event in East Palo Alto and a “Salute to Service” project where people assembled care packages for veterans and their families.

“I like some of those other kind of stories that aren’t directly tied to sports, but still important,” she said.

She said the experience also gave her confidence in her abilities. It’s one thing to practice her skills in the classroom, Spokane or Yakima (where she’s from), but she now knows she can apply those talents to an event as large as the Super Bowl.

“It’s been really good exposure to a really high-level, high-stress professional environment,” she said.

Campbell, a public relations major, brought her social media skills to the four-person Gonzaga team in the Bay. She’s a “Zagfluencer,” or one of the six students employed by the university’s Marketing and Communications Department to produce social media content for the school.

She said she was most excited talking to Simms, whom she called kind. Campbell said she follows his podcast a bit, and her father and brother love him.

“We were waiting in line forever to talk with him, and people just kind of kept cutting in front,” she said. “He was like, ‘These ladies have been waiting forever,’ and kind of pushed us up to the front.”

Campbell, who just started writing for the Gonzaga student newspaper, the Gonzaga Bulletin, said she learned reporters need to be assertive when trying to interview in these hectic media environments.

While she’s studied abroad and is a Zagfluencer, she said she doesn’t know if anything tops her Super Bowl experience.

“This is once in a lifetime,” she said. “This is crazy … But I think at the same time, I’m trying to remind myself, you know, if I want it bad enough, I can be in these spaces again later on in life. It doesn’t have to be the once in a lifetime, last time.”

Sweeney, a broadcast journalism major and sports editor of the Gonzaga Bulletin, said his favorite parts were interviewing Seahawks players, like Smith-Njigba and former Eastern Washington University player Cooper Kupp, in San Jose, as well as talking to athletes where TV and radio shows covering the Super Bowl are broadcast in downtown San Francisco.

As a San Francisco 49ers fan, he was thrilled to get photos with some of their top players, Christian McCaffrey and Fred Warner.

“As a fan, you’re like, starstruck a little bit, but as a media member, you’re just getting great content, and you have access to these professional athletes that are going to be on stage for the world in a couple of days,” Sweeney said.

He said it was nerve-wracking to interview these star players, but he overcame it. The chaotic media environment was also new.

“It’s very fast moving,” Sweeney said. “There’s a lot going on, and you just have to be on top of your stuff.”

He said he’s learned the media industry is hard work, but rewarding.

“I’ve learned how to work a schedule where the hours are long, especially with a huge event like this,” he said. “And I’ve also learned how to compose myself and be professional in a professional setting. As someone who’s not quite a professional yet, there’s so many different things that go into it, something as small as remembering all of our equipment in a very high-paced setting with a bunch of people in it, to learning how to ask questions to people, to how to remain composed in front of professional athletes.”

Sweeney, who is interning with KHQ with dreams of being a play-by-play broadcaster, said he never thought he’d be able to create content like this as a student.

“It’s been one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had in my life,” Sweeney said.

Hanrahan, a Seahawks fan from Anacortes, Washington, has been racking up the interviews with Seahawks players and media personalities.

He said he’s tried to stay level-headed while talking to the players he roots for from afar, but has stayed professional and fair during interviews, like with his favorite player, star safety Nick Emmanwori.

“But, in the back of my mind, I’m like, ‘Holy cow, I’m 6 feet from (linebacker) Ernest Jones IV right now,” he said. “Like, I just asked a question to (Seahawks head coach) Mike McDonald. It’s nuts.”

One of the biggest lessons he learned is you have to “shoot your shot” as a reporter.

“You got to have some guts as a person who’s trying to find interviews, who’s probing and asking questions, and trying to connect with people that you’ve never met before,” he said. “Sometimes you just got to walk up with your twisted stomach, all nervous, and be like, ‘Hey, my name is Michael Hanrahan. Do you have a couple minutes to talk?’”

Hanrahan said people are often receptive to it and willing to be interviewed.

He said he was happy to share the experience with his classmates, who along with Collett, helped each other overcome nerves and the initial shock of the week.

“They’re kind of anchor points for you, like, ‘OK, I’m here, and this is a lot to take in, but I’m not alone,’ ” Hanrahan said. “I’ve got other people who are in the exact same boat, and we’re paddling together, and we’re gonna make it to shore, and I think we have.”

He said the week flew by.

“It’s been a blessing, man, seriously,” Hanrahan said. “It’s something I’ll probably never have the chance to do again, at least in this context, being a student, being just a kid with wide eyes looking at all these people and everything going on. It’s really special.”

The students said they were grateful to Collett for his guidance and for allowing them to come.

“We can’t thank John enough for getting us here, for creating the opportunity and for being able to come down to San Francisco in the middle of a semester,” Hanrahan said. “We’re getting ready to graduate and to be able to make memories like this on the so-called biggest stage with all these athletes and all these other media people; it’s incredible.”

Collett said he would love to take his students to a Super Bowl week again, especially next year, since the big game will once again be relatively close in Los Angeles.

“I think this is a big piece of Gonzaga, just getting students out of the classroom for these transformative experiences that they’re gonna really have to grow and learn from,” Collett said. “And they’ll remember, you know, 10 years from now, ‘I can’t believe I got to go the Super Bowl as college students.’”