To say Nick Mendola likes soccer is an understatement. Not many soccer fans can say they write 30 articles a week for a national television network. Or that they own an actual soccer team. (Well, two teams.) Nick can. He works for NBC Sports covering national and international soccer games and has been a co-owner of FC Buffalo (“FC” stands for football club) for more than 15 years.

How did you first get interested in soccer?

One of my first loves was actually ice hockey and the Buffalo Sabres. Then, I started playing just about any sport I could. When I got to high school, I was injured during a football game, so I took up soccer to stay in shape for hockey and just fell in love with it. I remember watching the World Cup back then, and the U.S. wasn’t great, so I rooted for Team Italy at the time, since that’s my father’s heritage. I’ve always been a sports nut.

How did you land a job as a sportswriter with NBC?

I started as the senior arts and life editor at The Spectrum, working with George Zornick, Jim Byrne, Mike Flatt and Corey Griswold. After graduating, I wrote for a small local weekly but was not having a great time. Corey, who was working at the local sports radio station WGR Sports Radio 550, said, “Why don’t you come work here?” That really gave me my start. Next, I went to the Associated Press. One day, I was on the golf course with someone from NBC Sports and the rest is history. I’ve been here now for 11 years, and have worked through several World Cups and Olympics. Not on site, unfortunately, but from the newsroom in Stamford, Connecticut.

What does a typical day look like for you?

The European soccer world is up earlier than us, so I have a lot of catching up to do. We focus our coverage on the most famous league in the world, England’s Premier League, as well as American players abroad. The first thing I’m doing is figuring out what I missed from huge clubs like Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal. Then, I’m either gearing up to analyze games or making sure we get exposure for top highlights. Two of my coworkers and I also run one of NBC’s YouTube shows: Pro Soccer Talk.

How did your UB experience impact your career?

I thought I was going to be a business guy. But three weeks in, I switched to English thanks to a short fiction class with Professor Robert Zamsky, reading Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor and James Joyce. It sparked an interest in writing that I didn’t know was in me. Did I know that it would take me back to sports? No, but I might not have gone down the sports path if it weren’t for Reggie Witherspoon (former UB men’s basketball coach), Turner Battle (former UB point guard), and the UB basketball team. They really captured the imagination of the student body as the school progressed in the Division I era.

Arguably, all the major influential pieces in the latter half of my life came from UB, including meeting my wife, Lacey. After I graduated, I still worked on the football broadcast as a sideline reporter and did some play-by-play for the women’s basketball team. I’ve never been too far from UB, even going to concerts there with my dad when I was in high school.

Tell me about FC Buffalo.

When I was working in radio, I went to press conferences for an amateur soccer team in town. At the time, around 2009, I learned that they were in a bind if they didn’t put a team in the league. The owner was having some financial challenges, so a few of my friends and I were thinking: Will there ever be another chance for us to own a sports team? So, we pulled our money together and bought the team! I’m one of four owners, including two UB alums, Scott Frauenhofer and Donny Kutzbach. And we’re still around 15 years later. It’s been wild.

Anything you’d like to add?

Living in Buffalo, you’re around so many people who went to UB. Even people I might not have been friends with at the time but later learned we had run in the same circles. It’s neat to be sitting here 20 years later, still knowing the same people and having the same connections. When I was growing up, people said you could get lost at UB, and I kind of needed that anonymity at times. But what they didn’t say is that you could form bonds with hundreds of people—and it’s a strong, very real bond. It’s extremely Buffalo.