{"id":9084,"date":"2020-12-11T16:53:46","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T21:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2020\/12\/16\/bilingual-soccer-journalist-arch-bell\/"},"modified":"2022-11-06T19:16:21","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T00:16:21","slug":"bilingual-soccer-journalist-arch-bell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/bilingual-soccer-journalist-arch-bell\/","title":{"rendered":"Betting on himself pays off for sports journalist Arch Bell ’98"},"content":{"rendered":"

Feb. 6, 2019, is a day Arch Bell \u201998 will never forget.\u00a0It’s when the soccer journalist delivered a CLP at Furman that turned out to be far more popular than anticipated.<\/p>\n

Bell expected a handful of students to attend \u201cWhat is the Future of Sports Media?\u201d The scene that greeted him was far different.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see some people kind of milling around outside, and I thought, \u2018Ha, ha, they must be here for my CLP,\u2019\u201d Bell said. \u201cAnd sure enough, they were \u2026 It was one of those, \u2018Oh my God, is this really happening? I’m not really giving a CLP at Furman into a room full of students. Are you kidding me?\u2019 In the end, I think it actually went really well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carey Shepard Crantford Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures and Department Chair Linda Bartlett had recruited Bell to discuss how a Spanish degree had enabled him to make a living covering the game he loves. Earning it, Bells said, created a foundation on which everything since has been built.<\/p>\n

He recalled professor Librada Hern\u00e1ndez asking what his plans were for the fall of third year at Furman, and his answer \u2013 serve as the rush chairman for his fraternity \u2013 was incorrect.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018No, you\u2019re not,\u2019\u201d Bell remembered her saying. \u201c’You\u2019re going to Madrid. If you want to study Spanish, you need to go on foreign study.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Always a soccer fan, Bell was immersed in the game like never before in a culture that reveres it. And as a result, he was also immersed in the Spanish language like never before by talking about the matches and players with the locals. Countless Furman students have had similarly powerful study-away experiences, thanks to the Rinker Center for Study Away and International Education.<\/p>\n

Bell came home with a skill few Americans possess, though it wasn\u2019t until he decided to leave a career in software sales that he figured out how to use it professionally.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had started writing freelance for a couple of different soccer websites. I was just doing it for free, but I enjoyed it so much. I was making contacts and doing these interviews,\u201d Bell said. \u201cAnd then in 2011 I got my big break and had a chance to do some freelance stuff for ESPN.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Arch

Bell interviews Mexican National Team star forward Ra\u00fal Jim\u00e9nez.<\/p><\/div>\n

Bell pitched a story about Giuseppe Rossi<\/a>, a U.S.-born player who had spurned his native country to play in Europe and represent Italy in international play. ESPN liked the idea and agreed to pay him for the piece \u2013 so long as Bell covered his own expenses.<\/p>\n

Considering Rossi was competing for Villarreal CF in Spain, that wasn\u2019t the best deal for Bell financially. But he had a bigger plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s the old Texas mantra of always bet on yourself, and that’s kind of what I did,\u201d said Bell, who grew up in Midland, Texas, of Friday Night Lights fame<\/a>. \u201cI decided to take this risk and do the best job I could to try to work my way into ESPN’s good graces.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story<\/a> was published on July 19, 2011, and nine years later it\u2019s clear Bell\u2019s bet was a smart one. Today, he provides bilingual coverage of soccer to a global audience in work that appears on CONCACAF.com, Marca and ESPN.<\/p>\n

CONCACAF (The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football) is one of FIFA\u2019s six continental governing bodies, while Marca<\/a> is a daily sports newspaper based in Madrid that boasts the largest readership of any paper in Spain \u2013 about 2.5 million. Bell\u2019s ability to speak and write effectively in English and Spanish combined with a deep knowledge of the sport has made him a prized commodity, though it hasn\u2019t always been an easy road.<\/p>\n

Being fluent in a second language is one thing. Being proficient on a professional level is another thing altogether, as Bell learned.<\/p>\n

“When you produce content, you want to be grammatically correct. (If) it’s not, it’s going to take away from the reading experience,” he said. \u201cI work on it every single day. It was really hard, especially in the beginning. I get a lot of help from the editorial desk in Madrid, which is really great, but there were times where there would be a mistake that maybe the editor doesn’t catch. And all of a sudden my Twitter lights up, and I get called an idiot or (told) I don’t know how to write.\u201d<\/p>\n

Players who speak Spanish don\u2019t have trouble understanding him, but the unique cultural dialects they may have keep him constantly learning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Spanish that a Spaniard speaks is different from what an Argentine speaks or different from what a Mexican might speak and certainly different from what Dominican or Cuban might speak,\u201d Bell said. \u201cOh my gosh, that\u2019s the hardest of all to understand: The Cuban Spanish \u2026 The writing can be a real challenge, so what I try to do to complement my writing is to just read as much as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n

And speaking of Argentina, Bell\u2019s wife, Sylvia, is Argentinian, and he can thank his Spanish skills \u2013 at least in part \u2013 for her, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was basically ignoring me. I asked where her parents are from, and she said Argentina. So I started talking to her in Spanish, and I went from being discarded to actually being interesting to her,\u201d Bell said with a laugh. \u201cNone of this would have happened without the support of my wife. She said, \u2018Look, I’ve got a good, stable job. Why don’t you take a year and see if you can pull this off?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Bell lives in Austin, Texas, and the advice he gave students at the CLP was simple: It has never been easier to get your work seen. So do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy message to them it was if this is something you really want to do, start creating content no matter what it is,\u201d he said. \u201cYou hone your skills, and you can also present to a potential partner. It’s so easy to get that content distributed around if it’s good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Feb. 6, 2019, is a day Arch Bell \u201998 will never forget.\u00a0It’s when the soccer journalist delivered a CLP at Furman that turned out to be far more popular than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,26,3,60,16,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-administrative","category-alumni","category-alumni-profiles","category-modern-languages-and-literature","category-study-away-and-international-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}