By Joe Arney
Photos by Kimberly Coffin (CritMedia, StratComm’18) Jack MoodyĚýand the CU Athletics Department
In his playing days, you couldn’t help but notice Kordell Stewart (Comm’16) when he was on the field.
A harbinger of the mobile quarterbacks who were as eager to run the ball as they were to throw it, Stewart—“Slash” to the fans who adored the way he carved up defenses as a quarterback, wide receiver and rusher for the Pittsburgh Steelers—was impossible to miss.
That was also the case when he returned to the classroom in the spring as part of the Prime Time: Public Performance and Leadership course created by the College of Media, Communication and Information. Stewart showed CMCI students how his communication degree helped him in both the huddle and the media scrum, as well as in a varied post-playing career thatĚýhas included charity service and being an ESPN analyst.
“Dealing with the media can sometimes be a challenge because how you see it is not how they’ll see it,” he said. “You need to understand it’s about you—it’s not about them.”
But you need a different set of tactics when you’re leading your teammates on the field.
“Being a quarterback, you have to talk to everybody—you have to learn people’s personalities, their threshold for pain, their emotions,” he said. “How do you deal with all these different personalities? It’s not easy, but being a quarterback, that’s your charge.”
Doing so effectively is about more than just what you say, said Timothy Kuhn, a professor of communication, who attended the lecture.
“One thing he talked about was that as a leader, he recognized that he needed to read the body language of peopleĚýand get to a place where he could communicate without words,” Kuhn said. “That’s something we teach all the time—that words are a part, but not the end, of communication.”
A costly miscommunication
Ironically, it was a miscommunication that kept Stewart from completing his degree during his playing days. He shared how a misunderstanding with his professor—who failed Stewart for missing class while he was meeting big-league recruiters—meant he entered the NFL draft one course shy
of graduating.
Returning to school in 2016 to retake that course was a challenge, but he hit his stride around the time his classmates realized the guy in the back of the room was, in fact, Slash.
“That was the most fun I had in college,” he said—more fun, he insisted, than the 64-yard pass to Michael Westbrook thatĚýsilenced The Big House in 1994, capping off the Miracle at Michigan and creating one of college football’s most enduring moments.
“This was something where I had removed myself completely from this space, and found a way to come back to finish,” he said. “It made my time in Colorado feel complete—play good ball, do well for yourself, now get your degree.”
Crossing the finish line meant getting comfortable with the technology today’s students take for granted, but Stewart learned that connecting with classmates and communicating with faculty not only resulted in better academic outcomes, but also made the class experience more enjoyable.
From NIL to NFL
Another major change since Stewart left şů«ÍŢĘÓƵ, of course, is the NCAA’s adoption of a “right to publicity” that gave athletes control over their name, image and likeness, or NIL. He had plenty to tell the class about NIL, which was the genesis of the Prime Time course that has also featured guest lectures from Deion “Professor Prime” Sanders and others.
“NIL has become a guide to move forward throughout sports, because it happens when you go to the NFL,” Stewart said. “Being able to start that process in college gives you the opportunity to create an image of yourself to your audience, to captivate that audience—and that’s the intrigue.”
However, it hasn’t changed what it takes to be successful in a sports media career.
For Stewart, it comes down to what he learned in his communication classes: People working in the industry “need to speak straight up. No one is being held accountable for foolishness.
“You want to do this kind of work, you can’t be lazy with your facts. It’s like yourĚýclasses; you do your homework,” he said. “If you start pulling stuff or making stuff up, you get discredited. Know your facts and know your audience. It’s not about being perfect, it’s about having a conversation."