By Josh Siatkowski | Staff Writer
When Baylor’s star quarterback Sawyer Robertson is behind the mic, it’s usually a litany of media-trained football talk. But on the latest episode of the Baylor Student Government podcast, Robertson was just another Baylor student with stories to tell.
In the second episode of Baylor’s Bearly Presidential Podcast, Aurora, Colo., senior Lily Davis, student body president and newly-minted podcast host, sat down with the redshirt junior and Mississippi State transfer. The conversation began with a discussion of a historic 37-34 win against TCU, moved into life as a student and as a Christian and finally found its way to an array of bizarre personal stories.
After Robertson explained why Will Ferrell’s curly hair made him the best candidate to play him in a movie, the discussion quickly steered to a five-year-old Robertson’s experience chugging water out of a Lubbock science museum exhibit.
“When I was like five years old, we had a little museum in Lubbock, and I was so thirsty. They had a little boat exhibit where kids play with the boats, and I just chugged. I stuck my head in and got Giardia. Almost died when I was five years old,” Robertson said.
“This is what people want to know,” Davis told Robertson. “They want to know what Saw-Dog was like at age five.”
Theie conversation explored things you won’t hear in a press conference. Davis shared her childhood obsession with Princess Diana, while Robertson discussed topics from the other side of the Baylor Line. He talked about his love of The Mix Cafe and Cameron Park Zoo, his summer internship (yes, even athletes do internships) with Baylor Athletics and his faith journey.
“When [Sawyer] is doing his pressers on Monday, he has to talk about football,” Davis said. “This is a place for him to be open and share who he is in parts of his life that the students may not know. This is Sawyer coming on as a student.”
For Davis, this is illustrative of the new podcast’s goal. As she hopes to bring more transparency to Student Government this year, she began looking for ways to connect the organization with the student body in an approachable way. After learning about the University of Utah’s student government-run informational podcast, Davis was inspired to bring it to Baylor with her own twist.
“I wanted ours to be more focused on transparency and connectivity, and I wanted the podcast to be more informal,” Davis said.
Like most shows, Davis said that the podcast is focused on “showing who I am, but also showing who other students are.”
To make the podcast happen, Davis beefed up her communications team by bringing on film major and St. Louis, Mo., junior Jackson Lawrence as videographer. Lawrence, who wasn’t a member of student government until his role as videographer began this fall, said it’s allowed him to connect more with the organization, and he believes it can do the same for all students.
“As someone who hasn’t been in student government for my first two years here, this is a really good opportunity to showcase what student government does, but also who the student body president is,” Lawrence said.
Lawrence and Davis began working on the podcast earlier in the fall. After deciding on branding items like a logo and a jazzy theme, the show began on Oct.21.
The first episode hosted Garland senior Kate Boyd in what was essentially a trial run. Boyd, the chief of staff and a close friend of Davis, allowed Davis to work through the challenges of podcasting without any nerves.
“That was our first-ever episode, and that’s why we also did it with someone I knew, so we can be comfortable making mistakes and figure it out together,” Davis said. “Now that I have that footing, I’m like, ‘OK, now I feel ready to go and talk to someone I don’t know.’”
Iinterviewing your best friend one day to interviewing the current face of Baylor athletics the next is absolutely a step up. Despite the magnitude of the interview — which Davis landed with a simple email to Robertson — there wasn’t much rigidity, Lawrence said.
“We prepped stuff for this episode, but whatever happens is going to happen,” Lawrence said.
That idea becomes especially true around the 20-minute mark, when the conversation turns into talks of infectious disease, childhood nickname and comedy lookalikes.
But it’s also the guiding sentiment for future episodes. As the team works to create more episodes, Davis said she hopes it becomes whatever it’s meant to be.
