Background Research

Thankfully, picking this topic was not very difficult for me. I knew I wanted to do something sports related, I just didn’t know if it was going to be a narrative type piece, a documentary, or a YouTube-esque “career retrospective” type video. After deciding on a mixture of the documentary and career recap video, I had my ideas narrowed down to two: Coach Helfer and his long tenure at VSU, and Matt Ryan’s complicated relationship with Atlanta Falcons fans. Matt Ryan was my favorite Falcons player growing up, so that aligned with my passion, but because it was going to be more of a fan-centric video, I decided I wanted to do the Coach Helfer one instead. I had the chance to get more overall access to the people directly involved, and that would make the piece so much better.

The vision I had in my head for this piece is similar to an E:60 piece from ESPN. Their pieces are always longer and more in-depth, but they intersperse various B-roll clips, most of them in slow motion, with interview clips from lots of different people. Former teammates/coaches, parents, and even league officials sometimes.Another example is the documentary series “Dark Side of the Ring”, a series covering the careers and frequent tragic ends to the lives of professional wrestlers. Similar to E:60, it lives by interview, as they bring in tons of different people, from former wrestlers to former spouses to even federal agents and journalists. While I won’t be getting anyone from the GSC office for an interview, being on campus at VSU will a boon. I also know some people in the VSU athletic office, so they are at least familiar with me. I’ve also interviewed Coach Helfer a few times before, so there’s a slight level of comfort there. With all those factors, plus how interesting I found his career and story, I decided that a profile on Coach Helfer would be the best choice for my project.

Most of what made Coach Helfer an interesting story I already knew. The 2022-23 season will be his 18th at Valdosta State, and he had been very successful in his time here. He hadn’t moved up at all, even though he was successful, which normally leads to interviews at Division I schools. What made him want to stick around here? That was always my main question. Doing more research on him made that question stick out even more. He had started at the Division III level, but was an assistant coach for a few years at Kent State, a mid-major Division I program. From there he got his first head coaching job, where he won plenty of games, which then led him to Valdosta State. From every indication, he’s a fantastic coach, and yet he’s capped out as a high-level Division II coach. What made him choose that path?