My name is Oliver Jung. I am a junior at the University of Southern California, majoring in Print and Digital Journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. I was born in Seoul, South Korea and bounced around growing up. I’ve lived in Hong Kong, Singapore, New Hampshire, and Los Angeles during my life—with stints in Korea mixed in-between—but amid the chaos, one thing has remained a mainstay throughout all of my years since elementary school: sports.
It started in Singapore, where everyone was crazy about English Premier League soccer. With no geographic allegiance automatically tying me to a specific team in any sport, I quickly indoctrinated myself into the cult of sports fandom by jumping onto a host of bandwagons and hanging on for dear life. After window-shopping for a few games, I decided I would support Manchester United in soccer. The New York Yankees soon followed in baseball, and then the New York Giants in football (born and raised in Asia at that point, I had a thing for the Big Apple: the supposed pinnacle of civilization). I also inherited a single sporting allegiance from my dad: the Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1 racing team. Upon moving to New England for high school, I organically integrated myself into a fan base for the first time in my life, as I grew to admire the Boston Bruins. I enrolled at USC for college, so I naturally became a Trojan and backed my school’s athletic programs.
Now, on any given Saturday, I could start my day waking up at 4:30 in the morning to watch race qualifying for an F1 Grand Prix and a United soccer match kicking off at 5:30. Perhaps USC has a football game at noon, and the Yankees and Bruins could be playing during the afternoon. Add the other soccer matches going on throughout the morning and college football all through the afternoon and evening, and I might not end up leaving my apartment until emerging in a daze on Monday morning (Sunday is no different from Saturday, with soccer, baseball, an F1 race, Sunday golf, and the NFL all potentially on the air: worst comes to worst, there might be some basketball to watch). The obsession is physically and unhealthy. I spend so much time watching other people exercise that I don’t get much myself, and my team losing causes me a lot more anger and frustration than a win causes me joy. In the wise words of Nick Hornby:
“I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.”
Mixed into all of this sporting mania was my love for writing. I’ve loved stories even longer than I have loved sports, and I’ve also always loved telling and retelling stories of my own. I soon then realized that my favorite stories came from sports. I don’t know if a championship-winning goal or home run is cooler than Star Wars, but I do know this: Eli Manning’s Super Bowl comebacks over the Patriots, both in 2008 and 2012, were real, and they were unscripted. To me, the dopamine rush that results from your team’s unexpected victory has no equal. The emotional impact of any movie, show, picture, song, or whatever else—that stuff is coffee. Sports is crack. And being an upstanding human being, I want to share it with others.
So, my two passions intersected nicely into a career path towards sports journalism, and that is all that my life story contains to this point. I don’t know if I can articulate why I like journalism specifically. But if you ask me why I do what I do and why I’m pursuing what I’m pursuing, Nick Hornby once again illustrates my point with perfection:
“So please, be tolerant of those who describe a sporting moment as their best ever. We do not lack imagination, nor have we had sad and barren lives; it is just that real life is paler, duller, and contains less potential for unexpected delirium.”