Jane Slater never takes no for an answer and it pays off
Most would say experts on the Dallas Cowboys are 6ft, 300lb guys that can tackle you to the ground in a second. They might say the ones who coach them are experts, maybe even the one who owns them. What you might not know is that there’s a 5’6 127lb girl from Rowlett, Texas that could give them all a run for their money.
Her name is Jane Slater and she just finished her first season at the NFL Network covering the Dallas Cowboys. It was her first season with the Cowboys, but it was far from any firsts when it comes to talking sports.
With 2000+ hours of sports radio, one year at CBS11 Sports, and almost 2 years with ESPN covering football, basketball and baseball Jane has an extensive sports reporting resume, but her sister Casey Slater says people are still surprised.
“I would get calls, texts, emails about how knowledgeable she was in the field and everyone was always genuinely surprised, which is crazy, just because she’s a girl, how good she is at her job and she takes it very seriously,” Casey said.
If you still think she’s not an expert, she’ll prove you wrong.
Her coworkers describe her as “Tenacious”.
Her family, as “Bold.”
Jane’s grandfather inspired some of these personality traits with his own stories of perseverance, but Jane says her relentless and tenacious drive have also come from overcoming many setbacks and failures.
Due to grades on her Provisionals she didn’t get in to the University of Texas.
“It was devastating. I was going to come back home and I was willing to go to Baylor, SMU, you name it, but my heart was at UT, so as humbling as it was and embarrassing as it was to have so many friends going to Texas I stuck it out in Austin and went to ACC.” Jane said.
She ended up getting a 4.0 GPA while taking 18 hours a semester and got back into Texas.
She applied to journalism school, got rejected, applied again and got accepted.
“I had a journalism teacher who told me I would never make it,” Jane said, “screamed at me in class because I couldn’t understand what NAT sound was. It just wasn’t processing. It was so embarrassing. I remember the whole class just couldn’t believe this professor just like lost his shit on me. It was just those moments like people telling you, you couldn’t do it or you couldn’t get in and just every time it was almost like I found myself going, ‘ok well I’m going to prove that person wrong’. I think that after I’d done a couple of those I sort of had a bucket list. I was like ‘What else can I scratch off my list?’ How much further can I go? What else can I do?’ For me it wasn’t really about anybody else. For me it was just proving to myself I could do certain things.”
UT wasn’t the only place that denied Jane the first time. CBS 11 rejected her right after college, but she took a job as a producer in Tyler, Texas.
Jane stuck with it for eight more years in local news until she got an on-air sports position at CBS 11 and after that, a contract with ESPN’s Longhorn Network.
Jane’s contract was up after the summer of 2016 and yet to be renewed. Her agent found an opening at the Golf Channel and they offered Slater a three-year deal, but wanted a quick answer.
Simultaneously, she learned of an opening in Dallas with the NFL Network.
“I just feel like this job in Dallas is perfect for me,” Jane said, “it’s right up my alley. While I’m flattered by this job, I just can’t accept it yet.”
The Golf Channel said they would have to move on and Jane said “Ok, fine.”
She went out to the NFL Network. They had seen her tapes before, but the interview process was still eight hours long and pretty intense.
“It was a little intimidating,” Jane said, “because on the board I saw every single person who had come through there and interviewed for the job and I even knew some of the names.”
Jane really wanted the job, but she was still under the impression that her contract would be renewed at LHN.
Her agent called and said, “Jane are you sitting down for this? I have some bad news.”
He told her that LHN cut the studio and her job had been eliminated.
“I literally felt a pit in my stomach and didn’t know what I was going to do.” Jane said. “The NFL network has not gotten back to me by this point. We’re four weeks in, five weeks in. I know that the Cowboys training camp is opening July 29 in LA and I’m wondering why I haven’t heard from anybody. At the same time, I know that I really missed the audition process for any sideline jobs. I’m legitimately calling my former boss in Dallas to see if there’s any freelance I can do and I’m seriously considering getting out of the business to get into medical sales.”
On top of not having a job, her younger sister Casey had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
Right when Jane was about to give up, the NFL Network called her. They wanted her to move to Dallas and start immediately and needed to be in LA in 2 weeks for training camp.
Jane started her job two days late because she was fulfilling her duties at another job--her job as a sister. Jane’s sister Casey was starting chemo and she wanted to be there.
“Our mother worked long hours as a nurse growing up,” Casey said, “so Jane was always there to get me ready for birthday parties, gymnastics meets or the one to show up for the pop vote during cheer tryouts with balloons, which hasn't changed. “
Jane helped Casey at several treatments and brought balloons and party hats to celebrate the end of chemo at her last treatment.
Jane said her sister is incredibly stubborn and strong and the way Casey handled the cancer made it easy for her to handle a new job.
Jane’s photographer, Nigel McGregor, says she knows how to get the job done.
The first day they filmed Jane at the Cowboys’ practice facility. The music was too loud while Jane was talking, they kept trying, but the audio sounded terrible. All the sudden the music stopped. The photographer and audio tech yelled “GO!”, Jane nailed it and 5 seconds after, the music came back on.
“We’ve never had what we call a one-take-wonder reporter who can just knock it out.” McGregor said.
Jane’s most memorable moment this year was the day that Tony Romo announced that he was stepping down, and giving the job to Dak Prescott.
“I remember it was an off day and I’m sitting at home,” Jane said. “I had just gotten back from a workout and my boss called and they said, ‘What’s going on with Romo?’ and I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ and they said, ‘There’s whispers that he’s having a press conference today.’ And you know starting quarterbacks who are coming off injuries don’t hold a press conferences and Tony Romo has never held an impromptu press conference in his tenure in Dallas.”
Jane called all her contacts at the Cowboys. She had to get a camera and get down there.
They assumed the press conference would be an hour long and cut the original programming that day.
It was only 6 minutes, so they had 45 minutes of live TV to fill.
“It was raw. It was emotional,” Jane said. “He had said he was going to step down and defer and give this job to Dak Prescott essentially ending his time in Dallas. It was that turning point, it was that time for Dak. Dak had taken the reigns, but to be a part of that, that’s a piece of Cowboys history that everyone will remember. And that I was in the room and a part of it doing 45 minutes of live unscripted TV. It was so surreal.”
With a 13-3 regular season record the Cowboys were putting Jane on the path to covering a Super Bowl, but Jane wasn’t excited about that and their season was stopped short by the Green Bay Packers in the second round of postseason play.
“What was more exciting to me was watching the development of Dak Prescott,” Jane said, “and the chemistry and evolution of this team. This team had been so flat in my opinion in recent years it was just aging veterans, a history of injuries, a team that found ways to lose instead of win and the chemistry in that locker room was so remarkable this year. The youth infusion and seeing real rookies. I think it was about 75% of the rookies that came out of the draft last year who played and made an impact both on offensive and defense, so seeing them be able to sort of carry this team, the comradery, the belief in one another and then seeing them go as far as they did. That was so incredible.”
Jane continues to learn how to be a beat reporter, the Dallas Cowboys being her beat. A cops and crime reporter, which Jane was, and doing investigative work aren’t that different from being a beat reporter. You are constantly working your beat
“I was so devastated that I spent about eight years in news and could never really get back to sports,” Jane said, “but that time in news really made me excel at this job.”
“The feedback I got from my bosses,” Jane said, “was that ‘It was a seamless transition. We didn’t have to worry about you’.”
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