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Video: Eskimos’ OL Nick Cody’s journalism project crosses serial killers and newspapers

andrew bucholtz

There have been plenty of CFL players with unusual backgrounds over the years, from Australian punters to receivers who have bounced back from multiple sclerosis to English blacksmiths, and Eskimos' offensive line prospect Nick Cody makes a great addition to that tradition. Cody, a 6'5'' 310-pound player from Brush Prairie, Washington who signed with the Eskimos Tuesday, played his college football with famed Pac-12 power Oregon, but his time at the school was also full of studies in an unconventional subject for a football player—journalism. However, those studies led him into an even more unusual realm, producing a project that crossed reporters and serial killers. As Cody told Chris O'Leary, he graduated from Oregon Monday and would love to get into some part of the media realm if football doesn't work out, but he might choose the creative side:

“I used to think I wanted to be a newspaper writer, but after being in journalism school, I’d like to do film or television,” he said of his dream job outside of football.

“I’ve been writing scripts. I love editing, there are so many areas I could go into,” he said. “I have a lot of creativity and I think that helps me bring it out more.”

His favourite school project was a short drama that he and a group of classmates produced.

“I based it loosely off of the Showtime show Dexter, but it was in a journalism realm. It’s a newspaper writer who writes obituaries and he kills the people who he writes obituaries for. We did one five-minute episode of that and I wrote six or seven more scripts that are sitting on my laptop that I can do something with,” he said.

Here's the video of that class project, via O'Leary's blog (warning, some violence is included):

"My name's Paul Turner, and I write about dead people. And sometimes, I like to improvise." That's a pretty good tagline for a drama, especially considering the success shows about serial killers have had recently (from Dexter to The Following to Hannibal). The episode also has some solid potential, even if it may cast some negative aspersions on the journalism profession (just saying, not all of us decide to kill those who write in asking for jobs). An obituary writer who makes his own stories is an intriguing idea, and it shows Cody can do more than just block people on the field.

Cody certainly knows good stories, too, as his own background is remarkable. He overcame thyroid cancer as a kid, as did his mother, and he lost his father to colon cancer in 2006, but carries his ashes with him. He's served as a spokesman for cancer survivors and has been involved with the Relay For Life events. Cody is clearly a remarkable person, and a very creative one. If football doesn't work out for him, there may well be a TV future ahead...