The Daily Collegian should have known that accepting me, Jamie Romm, was going to be an experience even during the interview process before making the staff.

The major question asked of me was simple: "If Zack Mills (starting quarterback at the time) came to you and asked if you would write a paper for him so he could pass a class, would you do it?"

My initial answer was a simple, "No." But when asked why, I went a different direction than what my editors expected.

"Because I want Michael Robinson to be the starter, and if Mills failed, he would be replaced," I said to the astonishment of the editors.

Don't listen to those grizzled old sports writers of today who are constantly complaining about their jobs and are going from free meal to free meal as they report on their local teams. Sports writing is, and should, be fun.

When there are coaches and players I interview who treat the media as they would anyone else, it makes the experience that much more enjoyable.

I remember my first day as a men's tennis writer for the newspaper.

Sure, my beat partner quit, and I was now all alone interviewing people for the first time, but the experience was a blast.

I never expected to be in my friend's car driving four hours back to Penn State while talking to then-coach Jan Bortner about a tennis match his team just played. This was also while he was on the team bus four hours away in the other direction.

We had to call each other three or four times just to get a steady conversation going through the mountains of Pennsylvania.

That's what sports writing should be: an experience.

I will never forget the time I got the Penn State field hockey coach Char Morett, who was one of the nicest coaches and people I've ever met, to call her player Mallory Weisen a "hired gun."

Sure I framed the question as, "Would you say Mallory is a hired gun on penalty shots?" But the fact that she said it made my story.

I remember interviewing men's gymnastics coach Randy Jepson while I had a mouthful of M&Ms and he's eating a slice of pizza after a win.

Or when I interviewed gymnasts Matt Cohen and Chad Buczek about the team competing at the Bryce Jordan as opposed to Rec Hall, expecting a story about the advantages of the BJC.

Instead, they both went on a rant about how bad the lighting is there. Which made my story about 10 times more entertaining.

The moment where I realized that I was making a difference (and that people were actually reading my stories) was when I called the men's soccer team out for not scoring a goal off a corner kick all season.

The team scored two corner kick goals the next day, and we asked what caused the influx of goals.

"The Collegian article," was the response by two or three of the athletes.

But in the end, the last four years have been interesting for myself.

Sure, I've missed a few stories, accidentally misquoted a few people and spelled Char Morett's last name incorrect three different ways in one story, but they should have expected someone different when I came in.

Even if my picture next to this story looks nothing like me, at least I had fun taking it.

If most sports writers have as much fun as I did writing and interviewing, a free meal would not be the only appeal of the job.