About

You can reach me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ryanvooris.

I am a graduate student at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.  I’m studying Sport Management, an area in which I have an intense and longstanding interest. You can thank my sport loving and small business owning father, Gary, for this development (though luckily I did not inherit from him a love of the New York Yankees – a subject of great contention between us).  My grandfather was also a world champion Bobsleder and self-made man who owned one of the largest farms on Long Island. They both had a tremendous influence over my life.

I’m a Christian, who loves God and is thankful everyday for his grace. I am trying to devote more and more of my life to following his will. C.S. Lewis, Pastors Mark Driscoll, Mike Servollo Jr. and Sam Luce have had a large influence over my theological concepts. “Decision Making and Will of God” is probably the best book about Christianity that I’ve ever read. When I was 17, I spent 10 days in the Dominican Republic on a mission trip. It was hot, wet, dirty, exhausting and absolutely fantastic because of what we did for others.     

I was lucky enough to spend my undergraduate days at Ithaca College and SUNY Cortland, both located in western New York.

My areas of interest and research are sport marketing via social media, social media trends in sports, sports economics, media technology in the world of sports, baseball history and the epistemology of sports related knowledge.

I am originally from Herkimer, NY where I played baseball and ran track and cross country.  Reading is like breathing to me, and I spend hours everyday engaged in my favorite hobby.  Some of my favorite books are Veeck as in Wreck, Fun is Good, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening, The Road to Serfdom, Blink, The Tipping Point, What the Dog Saw, Freakanomics, Capitalism and Freedom, The Beauty of Factuals, The Black Swan, The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, The Boys of Summer, The Greatest Game Ever Played, Good to Great, Friday Night Lights, Seabiscuit, Unbroken, Flags of Our Fathers, Battle Cry of Freedom, With the Old Breed, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, Atonement, A Thousand Splendid Suns, The Kite Runner, The Sum of All Fears, Debt of Honor, Sphere, State of Fear, Jurassic Park and Atlas Shrugged.

I worked in a movie theatre for nine years, which is not nearly as exciting as you might imagine. One of my roles was screening new films for defects. 75% of those films were utter crap and most of the screenings took place well after midnight when I could barely keep my eyes open. I’d like to think I have developed a pretty keen sense when it comes to critiquing filmmaking.

My favorite films are The Empire Strikes Back, 2001, JFK, Metropolis, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Psycho, The Birds, The Godfather, Jurassic Park, United 93 and every film made by Pixar Animation Studios.

HumbleBrag Bio:

I’ve worked in minor league baseball, the NFL (via an NFL training camp) and for two Division I universities. My published work has been featured on ESPN.com, the Chicago Tribune, Newsday, USA Today and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Regal Entertainment Group and Best Buy somehow saw it fit to have me in middle-management. I gave up an exciting career of working nights, weekend and holidays to go back to school.

Honestly though the only thing that really matters to me is raising my two sons for whom I coach tee-ball and instructional baseball for, take to the bookstore almost daily (for they can play with the Thomas the Train set while I try to hook them on reading) and who I spoil with way too much attention and too many Pixar movies.  I also write run-on sentences about them.

Right now my goal is stop using two spaces at the end of sentences, something I just learned is grammatically incorrect but was taught in High School.

After that, I’d like to be a college professor I think.