How Suzy Kolber Changed the Game
I spent over a decade working in sports media, and I remember when the standard interview format was basically a script with a microphone. Reporter asks three softball questions, athlete gives a prepared answer, clip goes to air. The room felt sterile. Then Suzy Kolber started showing up on screen and doing things differently. Not because she was loud or dramatic, but because she was genuine and her questions came from actual curiosity rather than compliance. The core of what she did is straightforward. She treated athletes like complex people instead of content machines. Most reporters at the time were reading from a teleprompter-style question sheet, waiting for a soundbite that fit neatly into a two-minute segment. Suzy would lean in, follow up on something real, and let silences happen. That willingness to let an awkward pause sit was radical for broadcast sports. It forced people to actually think before they answered, and the audience could tell the difference immediately. From a practical standpoint, here is how that approach translates into something you can actually replicate. First, drop the question sheet halfway through the conversation. The setup questions have to happen on paper because you are working under time constraints, but after the third or fourth exchange you need to be present. If an athlete says something interesting, ask a follow-up. Do not circle back to your predetermined list just because it is there. I learned this the hard way during a press junket for an independent sports documentary around 2018. I had a rigid five-question structure locked in for an interview with a retired quarterback who had dealt with concussions. He gave me polished answers to the first two. Then he mentioned offhand that he still kept his old helmet in his garage and refused to look at it. I abandoned the remaining three planned questions and spent twenty minutes talking about the psychology of avoidance in athletes. That segment became the centerpiece of the entire piece. Had I stuck to the outline, I would have walked away with generic quotes and nothing of substance.
The second principle is tonal flexibility. Early in my career everyone told me that sports interviews needed a certain energy. You had to sound excited, you had to project authority, you had to sound like a broadcaster. This advice was wrong for most situations. Suzy understood that the tone should match the subject. When she interviewed someone about a championship win, she brought energy. When she interviewed someone about a career-ending injury, the room got quieter and the questions slowed down. The broadcast format itself encouraged constant enthusiasm because networks wanted energy for ratings, but that enthusiasm rang hollow when the topic demanded gravity. Matching your delivery to the emotional reality of the conversation builds trust with the subject, and subjects who trust you give you material you cannot get any other way. There is a specific technique she used repeatedly that most reporters miss. It is called the pivot-back method. Instead of moving aggressively from one prepared question to the next, she would let a topic breathe, then gently redirect toward her coverage needs without making it feel like an interrogation. For example, if an athlete started talking about team chemistry and the question you needed was about the playbook, she would find a connective thread. She might say something like, "That chemistry part is interesting because it comes down to how everyone buys into the system on Sunday." The pivot happens inside the athlete's own answer rather than through a jarring topic change. This keeps the conversation flowing naturally while still accomplishing the reporter's job.
Why It Worked And Where It Falls Short
The reason this approach redefined media presence is that it broke the contract between reporter and subject that had existed for decades. Athletes expected to be managed, not interviewed. Reporters expected to extract quotes, not build rapport. Suzy operated somewhere between those two positions. She treated the interview as a collaborative exchange where both sides had something to contribute. The result was more honest footage, stronger segments, and audiences who felt like they were watching a real conversation rather than a public relations exercise. But there are limitations that people rarely discuss. This method requires time. A pivot-back conversation takes longer than a rapid-fire Q-and-A. In a twenty-four-hour news cycle where producers want ten clips filed before the afternoon newscast, you do not have twenty minutes with one subject. I encountered this bottleneck constantly at regional sports networks. The producers would hand me a list of five players to cover in ninety minutes. Authentic interviewing does not scale that efficiently. You end up reverting to surface-level questions because the clock is ticking. The workaround I used was to identify which interview on the list would actually benefit from a deeper approach and give that person the time, while keeping the others tight and efficient. You cannot apply this everywhere. Pick your moments strategically. Another limitation is personality dependency. Not every reporter has the natural comfort level Suzy demonstrated. Some people are wired to rush through conversations because they feel awkward with silence. If you are that person, forcing authenticity will come across as calculated. The workaround is preparation. You can practice the pivot-back method at home by recording yourself and reviewing the tape. Notice where you interrupt your own questions, where you jump to the next topic too quickly, and where you let a genuine moment slide. It is uncomfortable to hear yourself, but it speeds up the learning curve significantly.
Get the Full Details
There is also the risk of over-familiarity. When you build rapport quickly, subjects sometimes say things that are emotionally revealing but not useful for the story. I once had a gymnast open up about an eating disorder during a casual interview that had gotten too personal too fast. The footage was powerful, but it was not appropriate for the feature I was producing at the time. It complicated the edit and required a conversation with producers about whether to use it at all. Setting gentle boundaries early in the conversation helps prevent this. You can signal professional limits without being cold. Something as simple as, "I want to make sure we get through everything you need today," gives the subject a sense of control while keeping the interview on track.
Practical Steps to Apply This Approach
Start by rewriting your question lists. The first section should be broad enough to allow organic exploration. Avoid questions that can be answered with a yes or no. Replace them with prompts like "walk me through what that felt like" or "what surprised you most about that moment." These invitations invite detail rather than compliance. Practice active listening. This sounds obvious but most reporters spend more time thinking about their next question than actually hearing the answer. During the interview, treat the athlete's response as the primary material. Your follow-up should emerge from what they said, not from what you wrote down beforehand. I keep a blank notebook during interviews and jot down keywords from the athlete's answers. After the interview, those keywords become the foundation for follow-ups in the next conversation or the editing process. Control the environment when possible. Background noise, distracting lighting, and uncomfortable physical positioning all affect how open a subject becomes. I once noticed that an interview subject kept glancing at the production monitor behind me instead of maintaining eye contact. Moving the setup ten feet to the left eliminated the distraction and improved the quality of the footage immediately. Small environmental adjustments matter more than most reporters acknowledge.
Accept that not every interview will produce gold. Sometimes the subject is tight, distracted, or simply having a bad day. Authentic interviewing cannot fix that. In those cases, fall back to clear, direct questions and treat the interview as functional rather than exploratory. Knowing when to shift gears is part of the skill set. The Suzy Kolber approach is a tool, not a universal solution. The lasting impact of her style is visible everywhere in sports media now. Younger reporters reference her directly. Shows structure segments around genuine conversation rather than quote extraction. Networks have slowly moved away from the rigid, teleprompter-driven interview format that dominated the nineties. Whether this change has fully replaced the old model is debatable, but the direction of travel is clear. Authenticity in sports media is no longer a luxury. It is an expectation. If you want to study this closely, go back to her interviews from the late nineties and early two-thousands. Compare them to contemporary coverage from the same era. The contrast in tone, pacing, and substance is stark. Watch how she handles defensive athletes who are trying to shut down the conversation. Notice how she uses silence. Pay attention to how she recovers when an interview goes off the rails. Those recovery moments are where the real technique lives.
The practical takeaway is simple. Treat the interview as a conversation with a human being instead of a transaction to be completed. Prepare thoroughly but stay flexible. Match your energy to the moment. Accept the limitations and work within them. The results will show in the quality of the footage and the trust you build with subjects over time. That trust compounds across years of work and it is the actual foundation of a sustainable career in sports media.
