First, a UALR student sent an e-mail asking for some career advice.

Then, there was a Monday morning office conversation with Chris Givens, Jeff Slatton and Doug Crise about the life of a sports reporter and how some folks still erroneously think of us as the “toy department.”

So on a slow sports news day, here is a brief explanation of what a sports reporter does.

Let me start with an example of what we don’t do.

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Sunday, Todd Traub had an excellent piece on how Dickey-Stephens Park has become a meeting place for young people. They sip adult drinks, eat fatty foods and make new friends all while the baseball game is being played.

But Traub doesn’t get to sip a cold one while he is working. He watches and records every pitch and play while writing on his laptop because night games are difficult. And when the Travelers’ story is placed on a page here, it is replaced with the Naturals in Northwest Arkansas editions.

This past weekend, Pete Perkins jumped in his car and drove to St. Louis to cover Ouachita Baptist in the Division II baseball world series. OBU came up short, but Perkins wrote his story and drove home. If he saw the Gateway Arch, it was at 70 mph.

Once, Jeff Slatton drove to San Marcos, Texas, and back to cover a UALR nonconference basketball game. Slatton was gone less than 30 hours so he would be home for Thanksgiving with his family.

During football and basketball season, Tom Murphy, Bob Holt and yours truly spend enough time in airports and Marriott Courtyards to write a nontravel column. These days, travel is tough and unpredictable.

A couple of years ago, a flight was canceled en route to the Kentucky football game. The crew ended up in Louisville at 1 a. m. instead of Lexington, spent the night there and drove the 100 miles to Lexington the next day for a night game.

They drove back to Louisville after the game and two hard hours of writing. They got three hours of sleep in Louisville before catching the earliest flight out the next morning so they could make that afternoon’s news conference.

This past weekend, Doug Crise drove to and from Kansas City by himself to do a story on Cleveland Indians pitcher Cliff Lee, from Benton, who has started this season as the hottest pitcher in the majors.

Nothing is harder on the blood pressure than night basketball games.

If a game ends at 9 p. m. we have to have our stories to the sport desk by 9: 01 to make state deadline. That means from the 14-minute mark of the second half until the game is over, we are taking notes, hammering out our stories and quite often deleting gobs of lines and starting over when the game changes momentum.

Most-often-heard statement after a night game that went overtime: “I just hope it is in English.”

I won’t even go into the seven-overtime football game at Ole Miss.

The days of old when a sports reporter was an extension of the team are long gone.

These days, we have to be able to read a police blotter and a financial statement. We cover social events and games that are sometimes one-sided and about as exciting as stale pizza.

There is never a popcorn and soda break. Those media timeouts you hear about are for TV and radio to air commercials.

Our Friday night football operation has to be seen to be believed.

Before the Kentucky Derby and SEC spring meetings were sliced from the travel budget, yours truly drove to both, and driving is not my favorite thing to do. Derby Day was 16 hours of imprisonment in the press box.

Yet, for the most part, we love our jobs, and I’m lucky to have a professional staff.

That’s just a sample of what sports reporters do. Sometime, during the dog days of summer, I might get into copy editors, page designers and assistant and deputy sports editors, who are the heart and soul of any newspaper.

And while speaking of summer (54 days until SEC Football Media Days ), Wednesday’s column will be about my choice for president of the United States.