The white board had a simple message on top of it: “I have no voice.”
Between the regional semifinals and finals a year ago, Dana Jacobson lost the one thing she needed for her job. The CBS sideline reporter improvised and used that board to write questions and field answers from Florida State’s Leonard Hamilton and Michigan’s John Beilein the day between games.
“During that Gonzaga game [against FSU in the regional semifinals] I was really losing it,” Jacobson said. “It was a virus that I felt on the flight and thankfully I got it back for the last game, but I know in New York they were worried, ‘What if she doesn’t have a voice?’”
A controversy followed, one Jacobson handled expertly. After Michigan edged out Florida State in the regional final, Jacobson asked Hamilton why he opted not to foul with the Seminoles trailing by four with 11 seconds remaining. He answered with silence then incredulity, disbelieving that this is what Jacobson and everyone who watched the game was wondering.
“I swear to God I didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary except I was surprised he was unaware of the timing,” Jacobson said. “And I was thinking, ‘I just don’t want him to walk off.’ I had no idea it was what it was until I got back to the hotel and my boyfriend, now fiancée, texted me and said, ‘You blew up Twitter.’ ”
Jacobson is now back at the NCAA Tournament — covering the First Four and first two weeks of the event — but much has changed in the year since. The balance of her roles at CBS Sports and CBS News tipped toward the news side when she was named co-host of the Saturday edition of “CBS This Morning” in July.
“I get to do my favorite thing in the world, which is do interviews and tell stories,” said Jacobson, who will be telling hoops-focused ones each Saturday through the Final Four in Minneapolis.
“I could not imagine a world with all of that. And I get to keep doing the stuff I am in sports.”
Jacobson still has a regular role on CBS Sports Network’s, “That Other Pregame Show,” and does college basketball studio work leading into March Madness.
“It’s a scary thought,” Jacobson, 47, said when asked if she would ever leave sports completely.
It is, after all, what she has built her career on, first at ESPN and now at CBS.
“I left ESPN. I wanted to live in New York, that’s the only reason I left. I just didn’t want to live there (Bristol, Conn.) anymore. I had no job, I didn’t know if I was going to find a job,” Jacobson said of her six months in limbo at the end of 2012. “It was frustrating a little bit because I had never been in a position where you would go and they’d be like, ‘I love your work, but we don’t have room for you.’ How could you love my work and not have room?”
Jacobson landed a job at CBS Sports Radio as a morning host, but grew tired of the constant debate. She was working with the TV side part-time at that point and supplemented that with a boxing gig at Spike TV. She successfully pitched her first story to CBS News in 2015 and her career has regained momentum ever since.
“It would be hard to give it up,” Jacobson said of March Madness. “And it’s fun, as crazy as it is, I don’t think I’ve ever had something that’s as fun as the tournament.
“But if I think it is the right opportunity, I could see leaving because I do love telling stories. Right now I am pretty happy splitting, so I don’t have to decide. That’s much easier.”
