Fox NFL Sunday’s Curt Menefee Has Always Carried Coe And Cedar Rapids With Him

Once upon a time, a teenager from Atlanta took a chance on Coe College and Cedar Rapids.

It isn’t a fairy tale, but the story of Fox Sports’ NFL studio host Curt Menefee is a good one all the same.

Menefee was a 17-year-old from Atlanta who wanted to work in television, so he came to a city he didn’t know to attend a college that didn’t offer an academic entryway into the career he wanted.

“It defies logic, it really does,” Menefee said.

But while he was here in the mid-1980s, he applied the principles that he will share in his commencement speech at Coe on Sunday morning.

“Success is different from person to person,” Menefee said, “but we all have tools. I’ll talk about the three things I think it takes. You have to work hard, you have to be passionate, and you have to enjoy life. If you do those three things, you’ll be successful.”

At 44, Menefee is an unqualified success. He plays traffic cop to the likes of Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Jimmy Johnson and Michael Strahan on Fox’s show each NFL Sunday, bringing out their talents while smoothly moving the show along during the day.

He is yet another sports success story from Coe, which also claims 4-time Super Bowl coach Marv Levy and current Buffalo Bills running back Fred Jackson. Another Coe grad steered Menefee to the school.

“I was interning at CNN in Atlanta when Fred Hickman was a sports anchor there. Fred sold me on Coe, basically. It had no journalism program, no communications program. Yet I wanted to be involved in television. It makes no sense.”

But that worked for Hickman, who urged Menefee to give it a shot. Menefee, who has visited 60 countries, said he wanted to go somewhere completely different and distant for college. So Cedar Rapids it was.

While here, he offered his services to all the local TV stations. “Looking to do anything,” he said.

“I got a call from John Campbell at KCRG. He said he needed someone to carry his gear at the University of Iowa’s spring football game. There was no pay, nothing. Was I willing to do it? Yeah, I’ll do it.

“The next week was Iowa State’s spring game, and I went to that. John kind of took me under his wing. I learned to edit. John taught me how to shoot a camera, put together stories. John is a really good storyteller.”

Campbell urged Menefee to do voice-overs on highlights, then Campbell took the results to his news director. Menefee soon had his own stuff used on the air, and was working five-day weeks reporting and shooting.

Said Menefee: “John was always ‘Try this.’ It was always try this, try something you didn’t already know. Without a doubt, if it weren’t for him I wouldn’t be where I am today. Syracuse, Missouri — those are big journalism schools. But when I graduated I had 10 times more experience than those people.”

Campbell, predictably, tones down his role in Menefee’s career.

“We might have given him a chance to get his foot in the door,” said Campbell, “but he’s taken it the rest of the way.

“You could tell the business was in his blood. He would be here all the time. At 8:30 he’d say he was leaving, and at 9:30 he’d still be here, working on something, getting better.”

Campbell did Menefee another big favor. KCRG had an opening for a full-time sports person between Menefee’s sophomore and junior years at Coe, but Campbell talked him out of wanting to quit school to take the job.

“John said, ‘Look, this business is very fickle. Don’t jump at the first opportunity. Get your college degree, you never know what will happen down the road.”

Twenty-three years after his graduation and with several professional stops between Cedar Rapids and Fox NFL Sunday, Menefee is an accomplished Coe alumni addressing the Class of 2010.

“It’s such an honor,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what you accomplish in life, to be giving the commencement speech at your alma mater is above my pay grade.

“It was a big deal to me from the moment I was asked. This place holds such a special place in my heart. I’ve got lifelong relationships here. There’s a bond, a sense of community and belonging you don’t see at larger universities.

“I’m also really big on Cedar Rapids. The people I met here were good people.”

Menefee gave updates on Coe’s NCAA Division III football playoff prowess last season on the Fox show.

“The guys gave me a hard time about it,” he said. “I didn’t care. I wanted to give Coe some national publicity.”

Hard work, passion and joy. Listen to the man, new graduates.

Mike Hlas
Cedar Rapids Gazette