Q&A: Mike Vernon aka "KU Woj"
A few days ago, a KU groupchat I’m in touted a new scoop about KU’s head coaching search from “KU Woj”—a reference to NBA scoops maven Adrian Wojnarowski—and I immediately knew I had to get KU Woj (aka San Francisco-based reporter Mike Vernon) on the phone, ASAP.
In the recent past, Mike has been a newspaper reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, and while he was still a student at KU, he was a KU sports stringer for the Topeka Capitol-Journal. So, for him to become the leading KU scoops guy online isn’t necessarily a completely out-of-the-blue development; he’s got the chops and the toolbox.
But the way it’s unfolded has been truly exciting to watch.
In a landscape where local media is stretched too thin between reporting the national news that drives traffic and keeping up with their own local beats, rogue reporters like Mike Vernon can build followings without needing a newspaper’s byline or resources. Mike’s feed is loose, funny, but above all else extremely airtight with its reporting—”KU Woj” is one of the silliest nicknames I’ve come across in some time, but it’s kind of perfect, too.
A couple days ago, I caught up with Mike to talk scoops, his reporting background, and why the hell anyone wants this KU football job in the first place.
You have a long history as a reporter, having worked at newspapers while you were at KU and after graduating. But where did this particular reporting endeavor originate?
The reason I started doing this is because there's this whole rumor and gossip circle, almost open secrets about Les Miles and Jeff Long and about whether Les Miles was able to do a good job as a head football coach or even a competent job. No one was writing about them. Assistant coaches were leaving like crazy and no one would even acknowledge it. And so I'm in a group chat through text with a couple of journalists who have all covered KU. We were talking about it and they actually Tully Corcoran was the one who fired the first shot and being like, “What's up with Jeff Long and Les Miles?” I followed up and really followed his lead. I have a journalism background and I started talking to people who were getting involved in that conversation.
So, you still know the KU landscape pretty well. Did you reach out to old contacts, or did you have to find new ones?
Honest to God, I started fresh. I just was genuinely curious. And in that genuine curiosity is something like foolish honesty. I'd reach out to some good places and people who I think were aligned in terms of concern for the wellbeing of the athletic department. And so we just started having those discussions and building trust over time. It’s a feedback loop, and it’s very genuine. Both myself and people I've spoken to are coming from a very, very genuine place. They were concerned. And that's, that's what led me to this.
So, something I don’t think a lot of people know about is just how careful you have to be when finding sources and using that information. And since you’re not affiliated with a newspaper or a publication, it could be even trickier. How do you approach that? And if someone wants to follow your lead and report on their own topic of interest, what would they need to do?
I'll toot my own horn and say that this was the perfect storm for me. Like it is just right in my wheelhouse. I was not the best writer, but I was a pretty good reporter, always. Like I broke some news for the San Francisco Chronicle when I was covering Cal. Right. Basically what I would do is you gotta be so thorough in terms of just working it and you have to put yourself out there and it can be a little uncomfortable for me.
What has worked best is being genuinely honest. Yeah. Now what I can do that print cannot do right now is that I can run with something that I know is true. I can run with it off the record comfortably under the guise of HEARINGS and all. So that really helps. Whereas, if it were for a paper, I, I would really want to be talking to a lot of people—and I am talking to a lot of people—to get something so I'm not just running with it off of one person.
So my advice ultimately would be to talk to everyone. You can be really honest and say who you are and what you are hoping to do and see if you can align with someone else. Be honest. And never be wrong. You’ve got to make sure you're right.
I found out during the AD search that there was some intentional leaking of false information to try and out sources. And I don't know if they were my sources or not, but my people were protected because I talked to multiple people and I'm not running with it. You’ve got to protect your sources at all costs.
So, your feed generally has more football stuff than basketball stuff. Is that on purpose, or just the nature of the sports and how they operate at KU?
Well, one, it's a little easier to report on football than basketball. I wrote a little blog about this like two or three years ago about why the internet loves Kansas football. And I mean, the internet kind of loves to trash stuff and you feel like you're in this community with Kansas football. There's this old journalism saying that you either want the team you've covered to be really, really good or really, really bad, because it's just more interesting.
Well, Kansas has been the worst, unfortunately. And so it is really interesting, but also like once you're in or once you follow it, you're just in this community of people just like you, who can really connect on it. So I just think it's honestly like created a little niche community for the few of us who truly understand. And it's just also like... it's so erratic. But coaching searches are exciting for any fan base. So that's another thing where it's like, people just want to know who the coach is going to be!
I think this is a probably an unfair generalization, but the KU basketball narrative year-in, year-out is pretty similar. KU football is pure chaos.
Bill Self is a victim of his own success. And we’ve seen that in last few years, especially. These are movies we've watched over and over. In the Kansas football movie, every time you put it on, you have no idea what's coming. You're gonna laugh. Someone’s going to get murdered in the middle and you didn't see it coming. It's like watching a good movie for the first time, or like a horrible movie for the first time. Either way it's exciting.
Have to ask… any scoop you are working on that I can have??!
Kevin Kane is definitely in the mix here for the head football coach. And I had not really acknowledged him on Twitter as much, or not acknowledged his candidacy. But as we get closer to it, I'm starting to realize that I think it was a failing on my part to not take it a little more seriously. So I'm working on learning for sure. One thing, that's one scoop,
Another thing I’m working on—I think there's someone involved with this search whose name has not been floated yet. I think genuinely in the mix who no one has said, and to be honest, I don't know who it is now. I've picked up some context clues as to like… I think it's a young guy on the way up who does not want his name out there in case it doesn't go wrong. And I am going to spend probably an embarrassing amount of time today trying to figure out who it is.
A couple titans of big content just cutting it up... Keep cooking fellas