I’m joining Blue & Gold: Jack Soble

Late in the night of Dec. 23, I was packing my backpack in the press box of Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. The Columbia Missourian’s Mizzou football beat — myself, Kyle Pinnell and Kenny Van Doren — had filed our stories from the Tigers’ loss in the Gasparilla Bowl and we were debriefing the final game we’d cover together for the local paper.

We all agreed that we were impressed with Wake Forest’s quarterback, Sam Hartman, who broke the ACC’s all-time passing touchdown record in that game. 

He didn’t do anything crazy; there were no Mahomes-ian off-balance throws or anything, but he picked apart an excellent Missouri secondary that night. He scanned the field like the fifth-year veteran he was, threw almost everything accurately and consistently set his targets up for success after the catch. 

I really didn’t think I’d be covering the next game Hartman played, but here we are. My name is Jack Soble, and I’ll be the next Notre Dame beat writer at Blue & Gold Illustrated and On3.

For some background information on me, I grew up in Glencoe, Illinois, a northern suburb of the Windy City. I played defensive end for New Trier High School, receiving rotational snaps my senior year until suffering a season-ending injury. I spent almost every summer since I was 10 attending North Star Camp for Boys as a camper, counselor and village director, where I specialized in climbing and waterskiing. 

Most importantly, I graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism this May.

From Day 1 at Mizzou, I was off and running with the goal of someday getting a beat like this. I started out covering high school football for KOMU, our local NBC affiliate, and Mizzou recruiting for The Maneater, our student-run paper. (Side note on the high school thing — one of the games I would later cover involved Hannibal High School and their star running back, future Irish commit Aneyas Williams. Knowing nothing about him, I saw No. 22 in pregame warmups and immediately thought, “Yep. He’s the guy.” I think he scored like six times in that game.) 

Later, I joined KCOU, our student-run radio network. I became The Maneater’s sports editor my sophomore year, when I also covered football and men’s basketball for the first time. During my junior year, I started writing for the Columbia Missourian, the local city paper, covering more preps and NIL in its first year of legal existence. I also stayed on with TV and radio, not because I had to, but because I love covering sports in any way I can.

Senior year, I joined Kenny and Kyle on the Missourian’s MU football beat, where we cranked out several articles, usually including one feature, each week. We traveled the Southeast together, watching the Tigers get their hearts broken in Auburn and coming back home to see them push eventual national champion Georgia to their limit. We also filmed a bi-weekly talk show, hosted by then-KOMU sports anchor Chase Matteson.

I wrote about everything that season, from five-star receiver Luther Burden’s charitable work and kind heart off the field to the first night game in Mizzou’s history nearly 30 years prior. I wrote a feature on the longtime friendship between two defensive backs that held a strong secondary together, as well as a freshman starting offensive lineman who was a JV afterthought just three years prior.

I’m a sports nut, and have been from a young age. My earliest memory (not even in sports, just in general) was Devin Hester running the opening kickoff back in Super Bowl XLI. Five-year-old me thought being a Bears fan was easy. Poor fool. I fell in love with the intricacies of football, like schematics and technique, and I started writing about them. I’d like to think that passion for the game shows up in my writing, and I wouldn’t be at Blue & Gold without it. 

When I write, though, I don’t do it just because I love sports. That’s why I started writing way back in high school, but I stuck with it for a more important reason. In my years on various Mizzou beats, I realized that the people involved in sports — athletes, coaches, their families and fans — have countless stories to tell and it’s really cool to be the one who tells them. That’s a big part of what I like to do: go behind the scenes of something like a big recruitment, of a key sequence in a game, of what drives a player to do what they’ve done. 

That’s what I’m hoping to do here at Blue & Gold, for the many passionate Notre Dame fans on this site. I couldn’t be more thrilled to crack open some slow-mesh RPO tape and get started.

Preorder Blue & Gold Illustrated’s 2023 Notre Dame Football Preview magazine before June 12 and get free shipping!!! On3 subscribers should go to The Lou Somogyi Board for discounted pricing.